TIGSource Forums

(http://i.imgur.com/657Nm.png)

Version 0.1 is here!

.love (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/624888/Dungeonesque.love) (all platforms, requires Love (http://www.love2d.org))
Windows (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/624888/Dungeonesque-Win.zip)
Mac (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/624888/Dungeonesque-Mac.zip)

Quickstart Guide (http://i.imgur.com/ymI6L.png)

ORIGINAL POST

So, my first Versus attempt (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=17333.0) was very rewarding, a bit unpolished and imbalanced, and while packaging up the Windows version and considering tweaking the rules I began looking at doing a second game, because I really wanted to practice some network code.

Hence, this game! It's a pretty obvious idea so apologies if someone is already working on something similar.

Player One is the hero of the piece, roaming a dangerous dungeon full of (familiar-looking to TIGSource ;)) monsters and whatnot.
(http://i.imgur.com/cPHGX.png)

Player Two is the mean-spirited soul of the dungeon itself. It doesn't like Player One very much.
(http://i.imgur.com/Kv5dZ.png)

Essentially, it's a versus game where one player plays a hacky-slashy roguelike, and the other player plays a kind of reverse Tower Defence management game, placing monsters and traps and saving up mana to power up a nefarious end-of-dungeon boss. The screens are from an active build of the game, with networking code in place. Hurrah!

TIGSourcers, help me out! Does this game sound interesting? What issues do you think it might have? And what mechanics would you include? I'm thinking:

• The Hero's end of things is pretty standard - get to the end, kill the bad guys.
• The DM has to use resources to plan bad guys. The question is how he gains this resource (I've called it Mana) back.
• Current ideas - gain mana whenever the Hero takes damage/heals. Gain mana by placing loot or shops or shrines for the Hero to use. Gain mana for every tile the Hero uncovers.
  
• I'd like the DM to be able to: place traps, change monster aggressiveness, alter the dungeon layout, send spooky messages to the player, possess monsters and control them directly.
• I'd also like to include multi-hero co-op play.[/li
  

Some of these ideas might not be practical for the first builds.

Tell me what you'd like to see, TIGS, and if you like the idea. :)

[[Dandylike is a working title (D&D-like? No?) so if you have any other ideas, hit me. :)]]

What a fantastic idea! I guess you'll be needing some balancing to keep the game pace fast enough and make it fun for both players, but the concept is really great.

Yes! Pace will be a huge problem.

What I think I will do is create the most obvious implementation, with very basic rules and no balancing, and unleash it here to get feedback.

Thanks! :)

This looks like it could be really interesting. Good luck!

Maybe you could make Mana respawn in a sine wave way? So you like move across a sine wave and take the amitube of the sine wave and add that to the mana every frame instead of adding a fixed amount. So you would tend to have lulls and peaks?

Heck yeah. I would totally play this.

Mana generation:

I like the idea of the sine wave. That could be the 'default' mana; it would be enough for very basic units at its lull, and slightly better at its peak.

I like your ideas, as well; perhaps you gain mana whenever the Hero uses it (for spells)? Placing loot / shops that give you mana is a good idea, as well, as it promotes a careful balance of helping and hurting the Hero.

Work still progressing. Tested it over hamachi last night.

(http://i.imgur.com/OSy7R.png)

(http://i.imgur.com/0dGeN.png)

This reminds me of a table game, "Descent". I think it'll be very fun. Keep up the good work!

Another possible idea for mana would be to have crystals or shrines that cost X mana to put down in the dungeon, and slowly give you mana back, so you can recoup your investment after a minute or so and then everything else is extra. Perhaps you can only have one shrine in the dungeon, and if the player destroys it they get a boost to their own abilities or something. So it's a risky proposition for the Dungeonmaster, but it could pay off if the Adventurer doesn't find it.

Another possibility would be to have every monster the adventurer kills return a percentage of the summoning cost to the dungeonmaster. Depending on how many monsters you want the dungeon master to be able to spawn throughout the game, this returned mana could be anywhere from 0 to 50% or more.

I really, really love that idea. Thanks!


I'd considered this too; it'd kind of make it like Magic: The Gathering or Warhammer where you have a fixed budget and re-play after you lose units. Like a pop cap.

Treasure Chests idea (always talking about the DM point-of-view)
---------------------------------------------------------------

Placing treasure chests for the hero to get gives you mana. Chest could contain weapons, armor, insta hp-restorarion, potions etc...
But you can also spend mana, placing bomb-chest, mimics etc... or even spend mana to curse a chest you placed before! So you can think about chests being some kind of investment.

Some "curses" suggestions:
-Empty curse: That chest is EMPTY! Make the hero feel bad and go naked around the dungeon!
-Poison curse: Pretty obvious.
-Bomb curse: Boom.
-"Mana" curse: If the hero opens a chest containing this curse, the DM gets lots of mana.
-Mimic curse: Turn the chest into a mimic when the hero comes near.

And the hero can find some kind of "glasses" or something that allows him to tell when a chest is cursed (the glasses breaks on the process, obviously).

Another idea:
--------------------------------

At first, the DM only can spend mana on a few simple things: spawning low level monsters, poison curses, minor spells, trolling the hero etc...
But as the hero is being damaged you gain experience and can spend that exp on upgrading your Dark Lord's Arsenal of Destruction. This way you can choose either to upgrade your monsters, traps or researching new ones, and every match will be different :D

Hope you like my suggestions.Of course this game will need tons of feedback for balancing, so... beta time!

Okay, currently the netcode is only functioning through Hamachi, I've been told this is because of NAT negotiation (harumph). The two options are:

1. Get players to open ports (don't like this)
2. Use UDP Punching (no sodding clue how to do this)

Any TIGSourcers help with (2.)? Either way, Hamachi-able early-alpha available soon.

Oh balls, I knew someone would do something similar.

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=17350.15

:(

Don't worry about it too much. Within any given group of creative people who hang out and exchange ideas there is bound to be some overlap. I've been wanting to make a game like this forever, yet never had the tech savvy to do it.

So keep at it, I wanna play!  :handanykey:  :-* :handjoystick:

I'll definitely finish it. :) The other one looks amazing though. Also this has been amazing for me so far, I can't believe I wrote network code. :P Broken or not.

Thanks!

Also, I think Assemblee was the greatest thing in Indie games last year. Just went shopping for music, found a shedload of amazing stuff. Good grief you guys are brill.

Nobody reads my suggestions, :concerned: it's my english that bad? xD

Anyway, everyone (on windows at least) can get Hamachi, so let's test this out!  :handjoystick:

Your english was great! And I did indeed read your comments. :) Chests won't be in this first version but they will be soon.

I've seen you commenting on loads of other games too, don't stop. :) I read everything posted here.

This is getting a bit of version (rather than feature) creep as I keep delaying a release by adding little things.

A release is coming though! I'm adding in skills code now. DM needs a mana regen thing. Needs huge balancing too. :P

(http://i.imgur.com/5hd5u.png)

Honestly, an early release is coming soon. :P

That's the dungeonmaster and hero screens side by side?

So shiny! :D

T_T I saw that someone commented and I though that a beta was out.
 :beg:

 :eyebrows:

Decided I'd given too much love to the Hero, so the DM's getting upgrades today.

(http://i.imgur.com/mIphZ.png)

Once they are implemented properly (one trap and one loot box) I'll wind up the first release; at that point you'll have a flavour of both sides, I think. I promise, soon! Soon!

Got bored, designed a logo. Check the OP.

A friend has pointed out that an early beta release isn't really test-able without death/endgame mechanics so I'm deferring it until I've got those in.

Project looks awesome! Keep up the good work.  :)

Nice logo :)

Am bundling up and uploading a Windows and a Mac version as we speak, for release in a few hours. :) Requires Hamachi to play, also included a 'local' version (it won't make sense to do it 2-player, but you can play against yourself to see how the two sides work).

Buggy and not fully-featured, but definitely a V. 0.1!

Version 0.1 is here!

.love (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/624888/Dungeonesque.love) (all platforms, requires Love (http://www.love2d.org))
Windows (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/624888/Dungeonesque-Win.zip)
Mac (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/624888/Dungeonesque-Mac.zip)

Quickstart Guide (http://i.imgur.com/ymI6L.png)

The download links aren't working, so I'm updating them now.

Based on current feedback, the next version looks like it'll have this:

Changes
The game will be turn-based entirely, to see what effect that has. The DM can only place one item per turn, and then has to wait for the Hero to move.
Mana is regained at a fixed rate per turn. This rate may be increasable by certain actions/items, we'll have to see.

Additions
Skills will be usable for the three main classes.
Traps will work (invisible to the Wizard and Hero)
The maps will be generated with rooms and corridors, and pre-placed loot possibly.

Turn-based is the way to go here.

Also, cannot wait for multiplayer capability. This reminds me almost of FLS, an (almost) turn based game by a friend of mine (Colton). It was sort of what you have here, with the whole tower defense element vs. the other player conducting an assault. Only difference was rather than setting traps you would send units out.

It worked great with online capability, which is why this game will go places once it attains it.

Why not have the dungeonmaster play generator defense? The maps could be built around "mana pools" or something that are used to generate mana, could boost the player's own skills or something if he manages to get to them.
That way the game would have more of a clear cut ending for the player himself, get to all of the mana pools! Also, setting up a more linear path would allow the dungeon master to spend the match building up his defenses for his last few mana pools, whilst making the front mana pools delay the player as much as possible.
The player/dungeonmaster would have a nice balance: more mana pools you claim from the dungeon master, the more powerful you get, but, the longer it takes for you to get to the back mana pools the harder they become.

Just an idea.

I'm liking the idea of gen defense, really adds a strategy element to the overall goal of the game. But it would make the DM's work that much harder. So it could go both ways.

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback!

The turn-based DM thing is so obvious now we've played it out: otherwise the Hero gets a chance to run away with the game before the DM can react.

The next version will replace my random-scatter map generation with proper, Roguelike mapgen with corridors and rooms. :) It might even manage to give some proper enemy AI too so they don't just randomly wander around.

Thanks for the feedback! Just so you know, umezono, multiplayer is working but only in a sketchy way - you need Hamachi and a willing friend, but it does work. :P

It'll make the player's movement much much more predictable, so it might be easier for the dungeonmaster in some ways.
This would also give the game potential to be more sophisticated, as traps and skills can be geared towards mana pool defense/destruction.
Also, it would make the dungeonmaster feel more frantic right from the get-go, he'll be building his back manapools with his spare turns.

Progress report! We're now entirely turn-based. I'm adding in more information for bother players (on the health/level of their opponents) and seriously considering adding multi-hero support. I'm also adding skills in.

THere will be  at least one release before the VERSUS deadline but the game won't be truly 'finished' until after then so I'll migrate it to its own thread somewhere else. :)

Do eet!  :-*

 :addicted: this is my excited face

This is still going on! Almost all the skills are implemented for the Hero classes, and I've added in the SFX tab for the DM:

(http://i.imgur.com/NYFSn.png)

Don't expect great things, but do expect a stable release in about a week's time, with more features and better gameplay.

This is one of the most interesting games so far, and it seems like it's gonna be a fun romp. Keep up the great work!

Aww, thanks a lot! That brought a smile to my face. Have a new feature update: the dungeonmaster will be able to choose their boss monster (essentially, themselves) and the dungeon tile style!

The design choices would let you do things such as:

(http://i.imgur.com/fnbqq.png)

(http://i.imgur.com/DIHqL.png)

Very cool :)

Have you thought about maybe having different sets of monsters/traps etc depending on the dungeon you choose too? Or maybe have the dungeon type affect the costs of the different monsters, so if you have the green dungeon, green monsters are a little cheaper to deploy, but you can still deploy the other types?

That's a fantastic idea. It won't go into the next build, but I like the idea of 'teams' flavoured along with the dungeon. Cheers!

It looks like I won't have a stable build for the end of the competition. :( But I will strive to get a rounded version out, for my own sanity, in March.

That's too bad, man! I recognize your tileset/style from Desktop Dungeons (it was yours?), and was looking forward to playing. Interesting concept.

Nope, my tileset is from the assemblee stuff (and it's superb). I can't claim any ownership, much as I'd like to be able to draw this well. :P

Hey! 10 days left in March. ;D Just checking in to see if you're still working on this.

I like the concept of "paying" for harmful things by placing beneficial things. So, as a hero, if you're facing higher than usual resistance, you know somewhere there is a reward.