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[_Madk]

delay to avert suspicion

[Netsu]

Well, the gameplay you describe doesn't really appeal to me, so I focus on praising art By the way:

*vomits ascii orgasms*
I never even thought I could like ASCII so much.

[laxwolf]

I've only played a few "text" roguelikes (sorry, I don't know the subcategory) but this is the best looking I've seen. The slightly unsaturated palette and filled-out environments are awesome! Everything is so easily recognizable.

I wish you the best of luck, can't wait for more,
Laxwolf

[sublinimal]

I'm gonna take a moment to think out loud about

THE THIRD DIMENSION

3-4 accessible layers (plus the hash walls and the void) would be alright for most situations. Any more and it gets difficult to differentiate between layers from a top-down perspective, any less and there's really no point to having them in the first place.



Right now there are three accessible layers, this being the bottom one. You're on the edge of the void, and your vision is very limited. The rule of thumb is that you can only see what you can step on. The tiles on your level are, of course, visible. Only the ledges of the layer right above are also visible.



Climb up on the middle layer, and things get less dark. The middle layer tends to form trenches with the current map generation. It's not as messy as it was before, but I'm still going to need to even things out based on the amount of neighbours.



And the top layer. Only the solid walls block your view now. The visibility can jump quite a bit from the previous layer, so there could be a fourth one between the top and middle layers. That, or the top layer should at least be rarer than the middle one.

I like the compromise that your "memory" records the characters but not the heightmap. That way you can quickly review what's accessible and what's not, but you're not overloaded with information about places you can't even see. It's probably too dark for some screens, but I can't light it up too much or it'll get in the way. Another solution would be to use a lighter color for the background and a darker one for the characters.

Otherwise the palette is usable, if a bit bland. It's got just a hint of red/brown. I think the tone could change more between the accessible layers to help create the illusion of

THE THIRD DIMENSION

[_Madk]

depth scares me

[happymonster]

Looks a bit confusing to me.. Have you tried it with something like a building to see if that works as well?

[Netsu]

I think it might be more readable if the transitions between layers were less steep, so you always have a few tiles of the same layer in succession instead of having ledge after ledge. But that is just up to level design, not the height map system itself, which seems solid to me.

[eigenbom]

This is coming along nicely hope feature creeeeep doesn't set in though.

[sublinimal]

Hah, I wouldn't worry about feature creep quite yet. It barely even has features at this stage. In fact, right now I wish I had more courage to just go with the flow and experiment with my crazy ideas, but I'm too much of a perfectionist for that.

The height map is just supposed to make the flat caves more interesting and treacherous. If it doesn't work well, I'm prepared to take it out.

[sublinimal]

Don't you worry about me losing interest, I'd love to work on Panacea/Pangaea more, but I'm currently leading a busy life. "Spare time" is beginning to sound like sci-fi to me.

But I'd at least like to get some crude demo out eventually.

[_Madk]

*anticipates*

[happymonster]

*Ascitates*

[Ashking]

*Asphyxiates*

[Dakota.s]

This looks like it's going to be a lot of fun, I absolutely love rogue-likes. and this game definitely has a lot of potential.

[RayJack]

I usually hate rogue-likes, but yours looks so rad. I'm looking forward to a playable demo!