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[JasonPickering]

Captain - Diver - Mechanic


alright so I recently got into Dwarf Fortress and then this became my gateway drug into Roguelikes, so I thought about building a Roguelike I could continually work on in my spare time. well I started working and playing everything I could get my hands on. I didnt want to do the normal fantasy setting so I started looking at other stuff. While searching these forums I came across the "Unusual settings for Roguelikes" thread. well the first one was submarine and this reminded me of a much older sub game I had been working on that I tried to revive several times. I was making a submarine game where you drive around exploring the world and fighting monsters. then I realized that this was already a roguelike I just didnt make it turn-based. So I sat down and started working on this. so heres what I have so far.

so as soon as you start the game a world is built. its made up of a grid world 10 "Rooms" wide by 8 "Rooms" tall. you move from "Room" to "Room" (much like the board game Munchkin Quest or are very own TinyCrawl) and each unexplored room has an event when you enter. this event could be anything from a monster to a treasure. I have made a huge list of everything I would like to see in the game and I plan on making a working game, then continually updating it. so what do you guys think.

here is a movement engine test.
Click here to test

so its not really a roguelike but it is, but its like some boardgames. so I don't know what genre it is but I'm not really worrying about that and dont want to turn this into one of those debates. Also I really want to get suggestions for what people would like to see. some late game ideas I have are:

1. the sub will be driven by a 3 man crew. Captain/Diver/Mechanic
2. the diver can leave and explore by himself.
3. you will be able to go inside the sub. it will be a side view like in Life Aquatic. although the sub is very small.

I have a lot more but thats it for now. I am working on combat now.

[Ashkin]

Yes.
Godspeed, Jason.

[Ant]

Interesting stuff. Good luck with it!

[JasonPickering]

playing with this some more.

new UI.


youve got your 3 torpedoes slots. your health bar and air bar. and a spot for messages above.

every one enjoys a good pipe.

this is your NPC contact who takes you to town. thats where you can buy stuff.(animation is a little fast it will be slowed down and much longer in game.)

[deathtotheweird]

aha that's an awesome animation. this is a very cool idea. i love these experimental/unconventional roguelikes.

[saibot216]

Best... sprite... ever.

[JasonPickering]

thanks guys.

so one of the problems I am having is thinking of a goal. the main goals in most roguelikes is get to the last floor. but I don't actually have a last floor so that kind of limits that idea. so what do you think?

i have an idea that there is a Leviathan and you must kill it, but after looking around there is a game called DungeonQuest that has a dragon and you can not wake the dragon and are only trying to get its treasure. there is a deck of 10 cards 1 is the awakened dragon and the others are treasure so each piece of treasure you take raises the possibility of awakening the dragon. one of the Ideas I had was you could "photograph" each monster. you had an empty journal and you needed to log everything you saw. so maybe you can take photos. each photo of the monster being worth a certain amount of money. I was thinking of just making it to see how much "treasure" you could get. and looting sunken ships and discovering hidden temples all give you money. also the monster was going to be one of the more complicated things I created as it will only be a head, but all parts (jaw, teeth, eyes, are all randomly generated so the monster always looks different.

next part: any idea about good dungeon creation info I know about chevy Rays tutorials on here, but any other information. what I have now works. but I know I will need something more complicated down the line.

[shrimp]

This sounds great, I really want to make a "crewed vehicle" RPG myself someday, also somewhat inspired by Life Aquatic
Hope you'll add interns as a character class (that have to share one gun between them)

Dunno whether this useful but here's some other great "cutaway vehicle" reference (from this)

Lovely sprites and I like the sound of the boardgameish non-genre-bound gameplay.
Good luck!

[Fallsburg]

Well, I think that it wouldn't be that hard to have some ultimate goal.  Perhaps you want to get to the dark city of R'lyeh deep, deep on the ocean floor.  But only after heavy duty modification to your sub will it be able to handle the pressure at that depth.  Or something like that.

Well, scratch that.  The way you describe your game it sounds closer to something like Desktop Dungeons than a roguelike.

As for how to make the dungeon, I'll tell you the process that I use to make my dungeons currently.

1. Choose the size of your grid (8 by 10 in your case)
2. Choose the length you want the optimal path through your dungeon to be.
3. Choose the connectedness percentage of your dungeon.
4. Choose the number of rooms you want in your dungeon.
5. Generate a maze.  If the optimal path isn't right, regenerate.
6. Add doors until the dungeon is as connected as you want, making sure not to change the optimal path.
7. Close off rooms until the dungeon has as many rooms as you want, making sure not to change the optimal path.
8. You are now done, structurally that is.

This will produce maps like:
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
XSX   X X X X
X.XX  X...  X
X..   X.X.XXX
XX.XXXX.X.XXX
X ......X...X
X XXXX  XXX.X
X        XXEX
XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Where, X is a wall, " " is an empty room, S is the start, E is the end, and "." is the optimal path.
You then decide which nodes to make interesting, where chokepoints exist, etc.

I don't know if this is the kind of dungeon you are looking for, but hopefully it gives you some ideas.

[JasonPickering]

Tromack: thats really interesting. I am looking for something more cave like though. I am working with basically carving an ocean out of rock now. I have large "drillers" that go straight down and then when they reach a random point the are destroyed and each one creates 2 small random drillers. they just go flying off and carve out the more cavernous parts of the level.

Ed: yeah I like the idea of a full crew. what I am hoping to do is each crew position will have 3-4 choices of a person. and each one will have random stats that effect the sub health, attack, and air supply (I'm all out of love). then in the inventory each person will have a health bar that gets lowered during battle perhaps (maybe they bumped their head) and also loss of air and food.

[Inanimate]

I like the idea of taking photos! Can I please ask for there to be a "data entry" on treasures, monsters, areas, etc. encountered? That's always my favorite part of a game.

[JasonPickering]

what do you mean by "data entry"?

[Altemore]

The submarine roguelike suggestion in the roguelike settings thread also got my mind a'churning. I envisioned more of a top-down affair with crew morale and much potential for disaster. Your project looks wonderful, and so does your pipe. My suggestion: Giant squid. Please 

[Hangedman]

Maybe have an occasional minigame where you have to pump out a flooded sub chamber or plug leaks in the hull, or put out a little engine fire before it does too much damage.

[JasonPickering]

altemore: how could I not have a giant squid.

Hangedman: I thought about that but was afraid it would be way to different and really bring the game to a screeching halt. but i definitely had that idea. I even wrote down some of the minigames I could use, such as a button press one or a simon says one.


Well I have an updated world build algorithm, nothing too fancy right now. I have added in movement and the random placement of each "room" or event. I was working on the battle system last night. I am trying to decide whether I should go the Roguelike route of every button on the keyboard has like 9 functions or use a menu system and the player moves and selects.

as of now battle is very simple. you have Attack power and health. the calculations are supper simple, although very abstracted since there is no numbers shown to the player just bar graphs. I am thinking about making the better more random perhaps. like you have a 75% chance of doing 1 damage. 20% missing and 5% double damage. 

[Theon]

The graphical style is simply amazing!
More, MORE!

[JasonPickering]

thank you.

more art coming at ya. basically space will control the game you select a different icon above you like move, attack, or inventory here are some test symbols.



how they are all readable. and their will be a in game key that explains each one.

[Vinnie]

I've had my eyes on this, and I'd like to finally say that this looks great. The idea seems pretty neat also.

Those icons are awesome looking. So little pixels, so much detail. What does the top right one represent, jam supply maybe?

[JasonPickering]

well you have a "journal" to keep track. so i was either going to use the book or the "ink" it will probably be the book though.

[JasonPickering]

Inventory:


1. the porthole alerts you to the time of day.
2. the inventory itself. you see 3 items now. a health pack to heal a guy. the toolbox to heal the ship. and finally the flash torpedo. this allows you to flee a battle.
3. the people. you are the captain and can hire up to 2 other people. each person has a health bar and a random perk. right now with the 3 there you will get +1 to submarine health, +1 to max air, and +1 to attack power.
4. the health and air bar.

the plan now is you are the captain. but you can buy more crew members. this works 2 fold, you need to pay them per day, but they give you perks. also when I add being able to leave the ship you can pick who leaves. granted you could have the captain venture out, but if he is killed its game over, so its best to send out a red shirt. (they may actually have red shirts)

other perks I have planned are:
+ crew health
+ treasure
+ photos (photos earn more money)
+ health packs (heal more)
+ tool boxes (heal sub more)
+ barter ( makes stuff cheaper) no idea what this icon can be since it needs to be 5x5.

you can pick the your perk, but crew are randomly generated.

so there are two types of rooms. treasure rooms and monster rooms. you collect treasure from treasure rooms but each monster you fight will be written about in your journal. but you have an option of taking a photo. this basically takes up your turn allowing the monster a free hit. the museum in town however will pay you for journal entries but pay more for photos. I also had the idea (down the line) of adding a library to the town. there you can check out older journals to see stats from previous runs

alright thats quite a lot so whats everyone think. also would you like to be able to see bios for each crew member, that way when you send Johnathan McCoy out to explore a sunken ship you know in the back of your mind he has a wife named Samantha and two 5 year old twin girls Alice and Lexi. it has no game-play bearing it would just be a shame if their father didn't come home cause of your greed.