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[Pemanent]

Video log 1!!

Name: Dragon Mines (probably the most unoriginal name one could come up with.)
Platform: Windows Phone 7 / Mango
Tools: Visual Studio, Blender 3D, Gimp
Engine: Xna

Goals:
1. Keep a consistent devlog!
   - After I work on the game I will post here what I did, no matter how tired or lazy I feel!
2. Release the game.
3. Make a roguelike for my phone so I can have one to play anywhere.

[Pemanent]

Update 1 - Sunday September 18

One of my worst habits is to get lazy and only update my devlogs when I feel like it so my first goal for this game is to keep a consistent and steady devlog. I am really inspired by Gabriel Verdon's devlog for The Archer so I am going to model this log after his; mainly with constant updates.

I am a huge fan of roguelikes and when I got my new windows phone (really, they are not as bad as they sound) I was disappointed not to find  one on the market. "Why not make one myself", I say! So I am. This is the first roguelike I have ever made so this should be a fun ride of procedural generation.

Lets get to the game.
I am a good distance into the project already.
I have a recursive procedure which generates a series of hallways and rooms in a given direction. This is the first level generation code I have ever created so I am pretty proud of it! Its a good start.

I also have a procedure which populates the rooms with random items. Currently I only have potion items but its easy enough to add more.

The character can move around, open and close doors, and pick up potions.

In accordance with my enhanced devlog law I am going to include a picture of my progress with each post. If it is merely code updates, then so be it! Pictures of code!!

Here you can see the arrows for character movement in each direction. On the left side I plan to have commands such as open door, cast spell, inventory etc. In the bottom left I plan to have health, mana, and experience bars.


The graphics are very wip as I am still ironing out the style I want.

As for today I am working on the inventory feature.

[Pemanent]

Update 2 - Sunday September 18th

Really happy with the inventory screen so far! Basically I just worked on the background image.


I also played around with the style of the home screen. A good start but something still feels to be missing. I'm sure I'll find it soon enough. I already have a few ideas. The directional arrows are pretty crappy and will be changed soon.


Next I will work on actually filling the inventory screen with the correct information.

[Pemanent]

Update 3 - Monday September the 19th

Mostly worked on graphics updates tonight. Also some inventory interaction code.

Added borders to the buttons so the player can distinguish a button from plain text.
Also fixed the movement arrows. Pretty happy with them now.


Also put a drop shadow on the UI elements.
Here is a before and after. It is not as noticeable here as it is on the phone. On the phone it really sets the UI apart from the world.


Added to the inventory screen. The player will be able to scroll through his/her items in that item window there (the one with the potion text in it). I wanted this to be obvious to the player so the window has the same border as the buttons, thus implying 'you should touch here'.


I just noticed the border pattern is uneven   and I spelled equipped wrong. probably gonna fix that tomorrow!
My plan is for the player to touch the text of the items in his inventory. Information about the item will appear in the Item Stats window along with some buttons for the player, such as 'quaff' or 'equip'.

For tomorrow I will probably work on filling the Item Stats window with information but we will see what I feel like doing.
I am actually quite happy with my progress so far. I feel like I could work on this for ages! Apparently I really enjoy working on roguelike games!

[Pemanent]

Update 4 - Tuesday September the 20th

Got potion quaffing working today.
HP regen displays correctly based on the potion. Right now its random which is awesome to me.
Player health increases correctly when you touch the quaff button.


Also worked on a new character, instead of the @ symbol. Pretty satisfied. You can't really see him much on the phone so I don't see much of a need to change him anytime soon.

This is really my first honest attempt at pixel art so I am rather happy with my little guy!

By the way the borders on my buttons only look uneven because I scale my screenshots before I upload them. So in real life they are even. That freaked me out yesterday.

Thats what I did today!

Tomorrow?? Probably work on adding more types of potions!

[Yodhe]

Keep up the good work, though I really would like to see a different genre than the high fantasy hack 'n' slash format.

[Pemanent]

Thanks man! Yeah I couldn't agree more. The only reason I'm not using a more original theme is well I'm not really making this for other people. I mean I will put it on the market just because 'why not', but really I just want a rogue-like to play on my phone.

Update 5 - Thursday September the 21st
Didn't have time to work yesterday but today I did!

Added a bunch of stuff to the inventory screen .
- icons next to item names.
- player HP
- player weight
- a drop button to item stats. Right now it just destroys the item and later I will actually add dropped item to the level.
- weight text to item stats.



Just basically filling the inventory screen with information.

oh! I also made this ghost dwarf gif for my friend. I think I'll make it a baddie in my game.


It goes with this song here

that my friend made.

Next?
Probably work on different potion types. I said that last time but I really feel like I mean it this time!

[Pemanent]

Update 6 - Saturday September the 24th

Today I created a few different potions. Making items is really boring and not fun!
Vitality Potion - increases max mana.
Mana Potion - increases current mana.
Health potion - increases current hp.
Life potion - increases max hp.

All the potions are fully working. Meaning when you drink one the appropriate numbers are changed.

I also got started on some AI. Here is a goblin.


I REALLY want to make a post soon about some design ideas in my head. So far I have just been updating my progress but I want to talk a bit about what I want the player to feel and think.

[BlueSweatshirt]

Hey! Glad to see some WP7 development around here. 

Gogogo!

[Pemanent]

I'm glad to hear somebody is appreciative! I was worried the market was way smaller than I thought. I know WP7 is really new and already a small market but its good to hear you say that!

[BlueSweatshirt]

Hey, the WP7 market will never grow if people never add to it. 
WP7 will grow over time, hopefully, since it's a great platform. Getting your foot in the door early, before the potential market explosion, is a good idea methinks.

[EDIT]
one request:
scale down your screenshots so they fit the post frame. You can easily do that by saying:

Code:

[img width=500] src [/img]

And it will automatically scale to that width.

[Pemanent]

Hey, the WP7 market will never grow if people never add to it.  
WP7 will grow over time, hopefully, since it's a great platform. Getting your foot in the door early, before the potential market explosion, is a good idea methinks.

Indeed!! I thought the same. I would love to be the first classic roguelike on the market!

one request:
scale down your screenshots so they fit the post frame. You can easily do that by saying:

Thanks man. Its all the little things.
Fixed. Look better?

[Pemanent]

Update 7 - Sunday September the 25th

Added two mob states.
Chasing: where the mob chases the player.
Wandering: where the mob wanders in a random direction.

The mob will start chasing the player if he is within 5 grids of the player. Pretty junky so far but good start.
The player can attack and kill the mob but as of now the mob will not attack the player back.

I also worked on level generation a bit. Now levels can generate in 3 directions. My plan is to finish off the fourth generation (which I am close to). I am positive this is not a 'normal' way to generate random levels but it is working pretty good so far for me.

The goblin mob on the phone.


A blood stain after he dies. 


Next I am going to finish off the fourth direction in my room generation procedure and then start doing some random direction shenanigans.

In case your wondering, here is what I have in mind for random level generation. Warning - this might be very hard to understand! I guess this is what you call pseudo code.

Create a starting room. Add a door in a random direction. Create another room and hallway connected to the starting room. Create more room and hallways in some random directions. go back a few rooms. Generate in a direction not generated yet. This is where it gets all fuzzy. 
I know this is going to create some very square grid-like dungeons but its a good start. From there I can add in more randomness to break up the gridyness.

Anyways. Thats what I have in mind! I am pretty happy with progress so far!

[Pemanent]

Update 8 - Saturday October the 1st (technically)

Its been a while since I've updated. That is mostly because school started so most of my free time was stolen by that.  

Graphically I added floor tiles, so its obvious where the player can and can't be.


Also the player now spawns in a random room and then the 'camera' gets centered on that new location.

Almost all of my time has been going into level generation!
I decided to throw out my old code and try something different. It was getting to bloated and unruly so it became very hard to debug and in the end I just decided it wasn't going to work.

I'm trying a different approach now.
Step 1: Generate rooms with a random size in a random location and random doors. check!
Step 2: Connect all the rooms with hallways. That is the part I'm still working on.

Basically my approach is this.
Go through each door and create a hallway moving away from the door until you run into something. Then create a hallway to the left and right of that spot until you run into something else. If you run into a hall either the first or second time then open up a hole so the player can pass from the ran-into hallway to the new hallway.
Hopefully that makes sense!! The important part is that it makes sense to me! My last approach didn't make sense at all, not even to me.

I am going to continue to work on level generation for now. I feel close to getting something coherent. I also was researching cavern generation and it looked pretty straight forward. I might include some cavern levels... maybe.  

[Pemanent]

Update 9 - Sunday October the 2nd

Not a very big update today but an important one.

Still been working away on level generation.


That may look like a horrible dungeon to you but to me its progress! I'm starting to doubt if my current route is going to work. I might need to go back and research again.

Anyways. I'm gonna take a shower and probably get back to work on this. Indie as fuck!

[BlueSweatshirt]

Not bad!

I suggest making the floor graphic less bright. Right now it's a bit jarring compared to the walls, and I don't think it makes it look very good.
On that note, one thing that concerns me is that the graphics are a bit too small. On a phone screen it could be difficult to make out all the little characters and such. Maybe try scaling the graphics up a bit and see how it feels?

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

I suggest making the floor graphic less bright. Right now it's a bit jarring compared to the walls, and I don't think it makes it look very good.

I think the floor graphics look fine, but I'd maybe make the menu a little brighter than the brown you showed in the screenshots. I think the colour scheme works well, but the menu could benefit from a little colour variety

[Pemanent]

@Jackman
Yes I agree! I will eventually get around to making a new wall texture. Something less gritty than what I have now. Something more grey aswell, to match the floor. I don't even know if I am happy with the floor texture but while I am working on level generation they will work fine.
 
@Ultima
I concur. I just don't know what else to add.    Maybe a little drop-shadow on the words themselves would make it look better. I would like to add a third color but I just haven't had time to experiment yet. I do feel that the UI needs some work but I'm not totally sure yet. As I said above, at the moment I am working on level generation so most of these graphics are placeholders.

Thanks for the feedback though!

[Pemanent]

Update 10 - Tuesday October the 4th

SUCCESS!

Tonight I got level generation working!! Here are some levels from my code. I removed all the walls because its easier to see the level layout this way. It kinda looks good without those horrible walls.

Here are some really absolutely gorgeous levels! To me at least.











This is a really big relief to me! Now I can do a some more fun stuff again. Right now its not perfect. There are still some bugs. (Sometimes the player spawns in a room with no doors  ) But they shouldn't be that difficult to work out. There is even a weird double door bug when two doors are created next to each other. You can even see it in the 3rd screen-shot.

This is really quite inefficient, It really just brute-forces its way through, but it works and this code will only run when you create a new character so I'm not too worried.

So next I'm going to work on those bugs and then probably work on fighting. Maybe even let the mobs attack the player!

[Pemanent]

Update 11 - Saturday October the 8th

Today I worked a bit on level generation. Cleaned it up quite a bit. It is more consistent and it rarely creates something unplayable. I also changed the wall texture so it matches the style of the game better. I don't think it looks to bad but I would be open to more suggestions.

Sometimes it doesn't fill the whole level with corridors. Although that isn't necessarily a bad thing. It just means you get some weird stuff like this. What would you think if you saw this in a game? How its kinda open like that.


I also added a slime mob.


When you kill him he spawns other smaller slimes, a bit cliche' but eh.


Also you can see my cleaner level generation code in those shots.

@Jakman
I realized today that I forgot to talk about the graphics size that you brought up!
I originally had the graphics much bigger, but it felt to big. I cut the size in half but that was probably to much. The graphics do look a ton better on the phone in real life. I'm not sure what it is but it does feel natural to have small graphics when I'm holding the phone. Maybe its just me though.
Honestly it would be quite a bit of work to change it at this point. Hardcoding numbers in is never a good idea buuut I did it anyways. At some point I might go through and see what I can do. It is probably not as much work as I think it will be but then again, it could be a lot more.

Anyways...

My next goal is to add a bat mob.
Bats
    - always spawn in groups of 3 or more.
    - random mindless movement.
    - runs away from the player if alone.
    - easy to kill
That will bring my mob count up to 4.
Goblins, Slimes, Small Slimes, and bats.
After that I'm going to work on adding 3 more potions.

Potion of Observation
    - increases damage done with current equipped weapon
    - Your skills of observation grant you better knowledge of the weapon in your hands.
Potion of Harden
    - Increases defense permanently
    - You feel your skin is more resilient to attacks.
Potion of Opportunity
    - increases critical hit chance
    - Observation of your enemies grants you knowledge of their weaknesses.

Just some stuff I wrote down.