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[tametick]

This is about 2-3 days old at the moment, not much to do right now beyond wandering the forest & caves and digging.

The digging made me think of an minecraft-ish roguelike, where you mine resources in the cave and assemble weapons&items on stationary workbenches.

The enemies don't currently do anything, this is really in the embryonic stage right now.

You can download it here (packed for windows, you'd need to install DosBox yourself to play it on linux or mac os x) - just execute isobob.exe.

Screen shots:

A forest:


A cave:


-tametick.

[laxwolf]

Looks nice, would it be possible to create your own text for better filled and detailed tiles?

Good luck!

- Laxwolf

[rje]

Great start, can't wait to see what else you have planned.

For those trying to run it on a mac, here's what I did:

1. Download DOSBox
2. Install to /Applications/
3. Download isobob and unzip
4. Pop open a terminal and go to the isobob folder, and then run /Applications/DOSBox.app/Contents/MacOS/DOSBox -conf dosbox.conf
5. Enjoy!

[oahda]

I'll write down what I wrote on IRC (to which you're currently not replying anyway, you lazy snail ).

How do I know what's forest and what's cave? You need to add landmarks and/or a map so that I don't get disoriented. I have no idea how to get back to where I was, and I probably won't realise it when I do.

The uncovering mechanism is cool and nicely programmed, but I think it'll just get annoying in the long run.

Anyway, cool project. I'll take another look in a while when it's actually a game!

EDIT:
Ah. I saw the screenshots up there now. I simply found myself lost in the caves right from the beginning and couldn't get back out, so that's why I never saw the forest and experienced everything to look the same.

[tametick]

I'll write down what I wrote on IRC (to which you're currently not replying anyway, you lazy snail ).

Sorry, I've made it in a weekend game-jam and I'm still at the jam venue - we're going out now but will be back to answer the feedback in a few.

[tametick]

How do I know what's forest and what's cave? You need to add landmarks and/or a map so that I don't get disoriented. I have no idea how to get back to where I was, and I probably won't realise it when I do.

You can only go further down (granted there isn't much to see down there at the moment). There is no need for a map since the maps are exactly the size of the screen

[tametick]

Great start, can't wait to see what else you have planned.

For those trying to run it on a mac, here's what I did:

1. Download DOSBox
2. Install to /Applications/
3. Download isobob and unzip
4. Pop open a terminal and go to the isobob folder, and then run /Applications/DOSBox.app/Contents/MacOS/DOSBox -conf dosbox.conf
5. Enjoy!

Thanks! I'll package it up for mac & linux too for the next release, didn't have much time for that during the game jam.

-Ido.

[tametick]

Looks nice, would it be possible to create your own text for better filled and detailed tiles?

Thanks! I am not sure what you're asking me tho?

[Netsu]

I think he's asking if it will be possible to supply your own font.
Although the font isn't really spaced out now, it's just that they are arranged in a checker board.

[tametick]

I think he's asking if it will be possible to supply your own font.

Oh, you can't change the default font in CGA's text-modes.

Although the font isn't really spaced out now, it's just that they are arranged in a checker board.

It's arranged in a pseudo-isometric way as described here.

Probably need to figure out a way to make the isometry more apparent...

[Netsu]

Italic font would help a lot if that's possible.

[tametick]

Italic font would help a lot if that's possible.

Not possible. What you see is the only font supported by CGA (in fact it is slightly distorted by Dosbox, but it's not far from how the actual CGA font looked like).

[nihilocrat]

Any reason why you are restricting yourself to CGA text mode? I thought CGA was only four-color anyways, isn't this sixteen and thus EGA?

As I mentioned on twitter, it looks cool once you spatially realize that it's an isometric game, and it gets a kind of faux-3d look that looks really unique in ASCII.

[tametick]

I thought CGA was only four-color anyways, isn't this sixteen and thus EGA?

Nope, it was 4 colors in 320x200 graphics mode and 16 colors in text mode (80x25 chars, 640x200px).

There is in fact a hack of 16 colors text mode that allows you to achieve 160x100px "graphics" mode with 16 colors on CGA

In practice tho at the time pretty much everyone use the hideous 320x200 4 color mode, so that's what people think of when you say CGA.

There is no particular reason to the CGA limit, other than that I find it a pretty good restriction that allows producing pretty decent looking graphics but is still really low end and thus discourages me from endlessly tweaking pixel art and sounds.