DEMOSGAME PLAYLatest Build - The most recent version.
Historical Builds:
- Empty dungeon demo - just the rogue alone in a dungeon
- Combat demo - a level with some monsters to fight. Changes to the lighting effected - including less background contrast
- Items demo - a level with some monsters to fight and loot to collect. Basic menu system running.
- Items demo with new renderer - had to incorporate a Flixel style renderer into the scrolling engine to deal with severe chugging issues. Also optimised the collision engine. This demo does not replace the items demo so performance can be compared
- Magic demo. 6 spells available to cast on yourself, enemies and equippable items. Javascript log is enabled.
TECH
Some of the tech I'm uploading as open source examples. Feel free to make use of these.
SOURCEThe project is now open source on GitHub. Updates to GitHub will be slow on account of how completely confusing I find GitHub to use.
http://github.com/st33d/red-rogueIf you'd like to contribute, download the source and try to improve or add to it. Then tell me about it.
DESCRIPTIONWHAT IS IT?Red Rogue, or whatever I'll call it later is a platformer version of Rogue made with Flex.
HOW DOES THAT WORK THEN?Like Rogue but from side on. You attack by shoving your opponent or by landing on his head for a crush insta-kill. You can be killed by crushing too. So combat revolves around being leveled up enough to get into a shoving match, or finding a ladder to climb up so you can goomba stomp your enemies. Later enemies are of course going to be wise to this strategy. Due to the nature of the combat there's no jumping, but this means we get gameplay much more similar to the original Rogue and if you don't think that'll be worth playing, then go play Tony Pa's
Tiny Game - it'll be like that but with smooth movement.
TELL US ABOUT THE LOOTThere will be weapons, armour, runes and (because you play a girl and I herd they like them) shoes. Shoes will replace gold. There will be many pairs of shoes to collect. I may add in a feature of the Rogue crying if you throw them away or they get stolen by a leprechaun. Not quite sure what the shoes should really do, but I want it to be really obscure yet vital to the game. You also level up like in any other roguelike.
RUNES?I started to model the magic system on Rogue and I realised that I could save myself a lot of work by simplifying the whole system to one item that casts magic. But a very versatile item. Like in Rogue, all of the runes start off unidentified. You have to cast them to find out what they do or use an identify rune. Unless of course you have the chaos rune, which will always have a random identity.
HOW VERSATILE?Say you have the undead rune. If you cast it as a bolt, it will shoot from the Rogue and hopefully hit a monster. Kill that monster and you will get a skeleton servant. If you cast undead on yourself, get killed and you will come back to life as a skeleton. Cast undead on your armour? Same as casting it on yourself, but only a 5% chance of it happening. Cast it on your sword? The next monster you kill has a 5% chance of coming back as an undead servant. You repeat cast it on an item and you improve the chance of the spell working, so you better collect a lot of that rune and cast it on a decent item for it to be worth it. Effects are instant or for that level only, unless they are cast upon items. Thus the question, how does one best use this spell?
Of course I'm not going to tell the player what the exact effects of runes are, leaving it up to the player if they want to be stupid enough to cast a poison rune on their armour or a healing rune on their sword.
And I'm planing some easter egg effects, like what happens if you cast a bolt and your mouse pointer is in the way? What happens if you cast chaos as a bolt and it hits a wall?
CAN I PLAY IT?Just milestone demos at the moment. It's a massive project so progress will be slow.
ANY SCREEN SHOTS?This is a screen shot from the current build:
I'm doing all the graphics myself, so I went for a black and white with red blood theme. In homage to Rogue's lack of informative graphics.
DECAPITATED?That's what happens when you score a critical hit on a kill. You knock their head off and you can boot it along like a football. I spent an evening putting it in because it amused me. Someone suggested the decapitated heads inflict damage, so I put it in.
There is also a chance to tear out a heart in combat. This is effectively the potion system. You eat the hearts of your enemies to regain health.
LOOKS A BIT DARKYou'll have to cast light runes to expand the power of your torch. Some monsters will be scared of the light.
TO DOtraps:
pit traps
secret walls
boulders (potential game breaker in a procedural environment, might not make it in - breakable walls maybe yes, this isn't Spelunky after all!)
teleport traps
poison dart
stairs:
animation
transistion between levels
angband stair scumming - allow the player to restart as they entered the level upon death
quicksave - offer the option to quit the game and capture the current state of the game to play again later (a true quicksave I've never seen in Flash - this will be interesting)
the overworld (accessible from level 1 and portals):
backdrop - single screen full colour (contrast to black and white dungeon)
the grindstone
the healstone
build demo 5
saving and game sharing / debugging:
xml states for level
xml output (javascript call that generates xml browser page?)
xml input
store xml copy in shared object
elaborate on previous milestones:
more monsters - new monsters each level
more items - shoes, crying, etc
more runes - as many as I can think of
more traps - same again
boss fights - room blocking trolls and the macguffin holding demon
balancing - call out for play testers
more easter eggs (konami code and collosal cave code need to have their effect assigned)
move towards final build - update final build on a regular basis
