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[laserdracula]

Hello,

I've been working on this for a few weeks now so I thought it'd be a good time for some feedback.  

So this is a roguelike that controls a bit like Zelda.  You can equip two items at a time which are used by either the z or x keys.  Only weapons equip to the z key but expendables can be equipped to the x key.  Along your way you'll find items.  Some of them can be used to make your weapons stronger, add an elemental attribute, or add effects to them.  This is accomplished at "forge altars" that are generated randomly.

You also have energy that is replenished by eating food.  When your health is less than max you will lose energy to regain health.  Energy is also used for magic attacks from elemental weapons.

Currently there's only 2 weapons to be found, the sword and the axe.  I'm gonna have a few others like boomerang and spear.

This is a pretty rough demo of several floors with varied settings.  There's no title screen and some of the sounds and stuff are temporary.  The walls and tiles will have blank spots occasionally and I think the music looping may get out of sync if the framerate dips or something.

It runs well for me but after testing it for hours my computer gets pretty winded.  I'm interested in knowing if there are any speed issues for you guys, particularly when generating floors.

I'd also like to know if it's too easy/hard.  I've only given it a cursory balance to make it playable.

There're six floors and you'll loop back to floor 2 when you reach the stairs in floor 6.  Press escape to quit the game.

Best regards,
Dave

note: to trigger a landmine, drop or throw an item onto it



Demo
http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/untitled-action-roguelike/download/2868/

Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=civYTQe74uA

Forge Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8_USm9jCkw

[baconman]

  I'll be watching this one, too.

EDIT: You may consider pre-equipping the sword, or at least warning others that they have to equip it themselves. Cheap death #1 came from that.

Cheap death #2. Your algorhythm, for one whole game, generated nothing but single-wide downward passages with intermittent critter rooms. Wouldn't be bad, if not for the fact that it generated NO food (within reach?), and 2nd floor was littered with mines and spike traps, and no way to maneuver around them at all.

And either your RNG really hates me, or your berries all have 100% poison rates. Whether intentional or not. Even different types of them in the same game. Finally, it's rather insulting that the little basic slimes begin both with more HP than you, and doing more damage. XD Finally, either energy should drain slower, or food should appear more often. About 200-300% either way, if you expect the playability of that to even out. I did supposedly do a fire sword upgrade, but no effect seemed present.

All in all though, the pacing and physics of it feel dead-on. Your inventory system is nice and easy to navigate through, as well. Just a little fine-tuning's all it takes. I'm looking forward to this moving on!

[Destral]

Oh man, this looks so cool. I've wanted to play an action roguelike forever, and forever wondered why no one made one. I will be watching this like a hawk. LIKE A HAWK!

Edit: I downloaded it and played it for a little while, and it's pretty fun so far. The graphics are good too. I'm looking forward to see what else you do with this. Good job! 

[laserdracula]

EDIT: You may consider pre-equipping the sword, or at least warning others that they have to equip it themselves. Cheap death #1 came from that.

Whoops.  Yeah I should do that.

Cheap death #2. Your algorhythm, for one whole game, generated nothing but single-wide downward passages with intermittent critter rooms. Wouldn't be bad, if not for the fact that it generated NO food (within reach?), and 2nd floor was littered with mines and spike traps, and no way to maneuver around them at all.

I do let the spike traps and land mines appear along the main path; however, spikes can be chopped away and if you try dropping something on the landmines, they will blow up.  Presumably, you should have at least 1 item on you.  If not then you're screwed.  But yeah, I really don't like the settings I put on some of the floors.  The ones that end up as long corridors are kinda boring.

And either your RNG really hates me, or your berries all have 100% poison rates. Whether intentional or not. Even different types of them in the same game. Finally, it's rather insulting that the little basic slimes begin both with more HP than you, and doing more damage. XD Finally, either energy should drain slower, or food should appear more often. About 200-300% either way, if you expect the playability of that to even out. I did supposedly do a fire sword upgrade, but no effect seemed present.

There are 2 types of berries.  They both have similar names and colors to confuse the player.  The lighter colored ones are the poisonous berries while the dark ones are just fine to eat(last time I checked.)  Just a little good-natured player abuse.  I suppose I'll add some kind of more significant indication of the upgrade effects.  The element stones will change the weapons element which will cause it to do double damage against monsters that are weak against it.  I'll add a more significant indication of the effect.  The stones also allow you to charge the weapon for a magic attack that costs 10 energy.  You can also use the stones as expendables to perform a powerful magic attack.

Thanks for the feedback!  Definitely a lot of stuff to work on!

 

[adelhaid]

I really liked it. All the fundamentals are dead on, as others said, and it's fun to play.
Problems and feature request:
 
* Add fists as weapon. it's a Rougelike after all.
* Add a "fog" the represents the player POV. it's very confusing when monsters appear out of thin air.
* Rooms which were cleaned of monsters should remain that way at least a minute -  unless there are Blink Dogs.
* Add running, or make the dungeons smaller. Generally, having more control on the character (strafe, jump, defend) could really help the action parts.
* the sound of footsteps is too high. it's annoying.

I'm looking forward to the next version.

[baconman]

Fists wouldn't be hard to make, and you could copypaste the sword with an invisible hitbox, and there you go. Having other objects like the bushes interact differently with that could have interesting effects, as well; but not essential to core play for now. Come back to this in a bit.

The fog is a good idea; or at least change the brightness/color of tiles that aren't within the player's view - that way the map is sorta clear, but the contents are not; and you can clearly tell where your visibility/perception begins and ends. I'd also recommend adding a radial range of perception, at least 2 tiles around in every direction, maybe 3 - particularly for the sake of "around the corner fights." After all, nobody's full perception is limited to sight alone.

A perception filter would also be the ideal way to generate monsters, so they aren't already on top of you when they spawn, except on select occasions like traps or an area/monster type specifically meant to do that.

I actually LIKE the larger size of the dungeons, personally. It feels a lot more about exploring and navigating than most typical Tic-Tac-Toe RL's. But I do believe it should be taken into account in level design; IE: you won't need 3 "levels" of a certain environment, one or two will suffice just fine.

[laserdracula]

Now that you guys say that I will definitely add a punch.  It had crossed my mind but I wasn't sure it was necessary. 

I also feel the same way about having fog.  It should Have something of that nature.  I just need to come up with something that won't hurt performance. 

[baconman]

Check perception range. "if (perception = false) <set color_bright = color_bright - 3>" might do it, without adding any objects at all. You could also consider applying it just to the floors, so the walls remain obvious/visible, if you'd like; but I'd try it both ways and see what looks best.

One idea for the long, corridor floortypes is to create two or three paths from start to finish, and block them each off from one another - or maybe allow a single exchange point between each of them. But there would have to be some incentive for path-choosing, like a different type of challenge associated with each path. It's something to toss around for later, I suppose.

How's the berry algorhythm, btw? (PM me if you don't want to spoil it.) I ate one of each in another game or two, and both poisoned me again, consistently. If there's some kind of "safe berry" tag for instance, you might check it's variable for spelling/consistency, just in case; but not knowing if you're doing that differently means I couldn't tell for sure if that's the issue.

It's still a blast though!

[Landshark RAWR]

You could have different coloured berries (red/blue/yellow) and have their effects randomized at the start of the game, so red is poisoned, blue is energy, and yellow is more energy, but the next game the effects for each are different.

[laserdracula]

You could have different coloured berries (red/blue/yellow) and have their effects randomized at the start of the game, so red is poisoned, blue is energy, and yellow is more energy, but the next game the effects for each are different.

That reminds me of "Fatal Labyrinth" for the Genesis.  Every item in the game was randomized so you would have the looming threat of hurting or killing yourself every time you tried a new item.  I thought about doing that but my intent is more to keep the player on his toes rather than leave it up to chance.  More berries is a good idea though.  But I've checked the berry thing several times and it always works correctly for me.   

[baconman]

I'll re-dl it, see if that does something. Maybe your RNG really does just hate me, haha!