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[koiwai]

What is interesting about it?

1. The game is quite different from many Roguelikes and RPG games. First of all, the time system is semi-continuous: Your discrete actions are simulated in the continuous space and time, so you get interesting combat mechanics with a lot of pushing and dodging, while largely preserving the feel of familiar grid based games.  

2. The game world is simulated on two scales: The area around the player is simulated precisely with every detail taken into account, however, the rest of the world is not static and is evolving too with a bit coarser but still quite accurate simulation. Both simulation levels interact seamlessly, so your small actions will affect the whole big world. You can defend your village and make it stronger in the war with a neighboring tribe, or you can go explore the world and fight monsters in the underground dungeons.
  
3. Many features, for example social organizations of the NPCs, reputation, rumors, spell casting, villains, apocalyptic events and global quests are not implemented yet.

Can I play the game?

>>> Download for Windows:
Download the latest Windows build (January, 20, 2015).

How to play: README at Github.

>>> Download for Linux (and probably OSX):
Get the source code from Github. Compilation is straightforward. install the latest ocaml package for your system. Make sure you have your SDL1.2 and OpenGL libraries installed. Then just execute make.

How to play: README at Github

Controls

Arrow keys or h j k l - Movement
w a s d or Ctrl+direction - Melee attack
t - Rest
Space - Wait
i or Enter - Inventory mode (0, 1, 2 to move items between sections, Esc to cancel)
f - Ranged attack mode (f to shoot, Esc to cancel)
v - Interaction mode (v or Enter to open/close doors or barter, f for ranged attack)
m - Map (arrow keys and <, > to move, Esc to cancel)
< > - Use stairs
+ - - Faster or slower game speed
Esc or q - Cancel
Ctrl+q - Save and quit

Tips for new players

When you start playing, first, take a look at your CNS (Constitution). This is your mass in kilograms, and your max HP. Heavy characters are slower, and light characters are weaker. Also, light characters have better magical abilities.

The very first goal is to find some weapon, even a simple stick or a knife will make a big difference. You also may find a good random seed, where you start with weapons. To rest, press t, you will recover some HP. When equipping new items, pay attention to MBL (Mobility). When it drops down (say below 0.9), your damage also goes down considerably, and this is not what you want.

To get full Documentation about the game, read the README at Github.

The game is open source, distributed under GPL3 license.

[Gamedragon]

I saw this over at the Roguetemple Forums! As I recall it looked great already!

[koiwai]

Thanks, I am reaching for a broader audience ) The more people know about the game, the more feedback I get.
I will be posting some updates about the game and how it is working internally, dungeon generation and other topics that may be of interest to people here.

Here are the game items. Yes, mostly weapons

The items made of different materials have different parameters (damage, weight, attack time). Also, the huge swords and axes are too heavy for a normal character to use; even though there is no strict limit on the item size, they are very impractical. They are also very expensive and it's almost impossible to find one. 

The player must balance their equipment choosing the best armor and weapons that don't encumber their movement too much. You are free to wield two weapons if you don't want get extra protection from the shield. Although, recently, in my most successful run, I had a very good shield and was armored very well.

[Mete]

I tried to build it on Ubuntu and it gaves me a 'Fatal error: exception Invalid_argument("Random.int")' when I tried to run, do you know what this could be?

[koiwai]

Run it with the argument "?"

Code:

./wanderers ?

It will create a new game with a random seed. Then, it will work fine. This is a bug I did not notice, because I already have a save file, and the game loads it when no arguments is supplied. When I refactored this code, I probably made a mistake. I will fix it in the next update.

I should probably explain the main characteristics of the player.

When you start playing, first, take a look at your CNS (Constitution). This is your mass in kilograms, and your max HP. It is better if CNS is in the range 65-85. Too heavy characeters are a little too slow, and too light characters a a bit too weak, especially when they are lighter than 50kg, but it is very infrequent. In the future, really light characters will get better magical abilities, but it is not in the game yet.

The very first goal is to find some weapon, even a simple stick or a knife will make a big difference. You also may find a good random seed, when you start with weapons. You can always restart the game with the same seed by starting the game with the argument

Code:

./wanderers seed

To pick up an item, open the inventory "i", choose the item with the arrow keys, then press "1" to put it on, "2" to put it in the inventory, or "0" to drop it on the ground. Press "Esc" or "q" to close the inventory. There are 5 specialized slots in the equipment container: 1) left hand, 2) torso, 3) right hand, 4) head, 5) slot for coins. (there is no difference between the left and the right hand).

When equipping new items, pay attention to "MBL" (Mobility). When it drops down (say down to 0.9), your damage also goes down, and this is not what you want.

For long-term goals, try to reach level 14 of the dungeons. Or collect more than 50 coins.

[Mete]

Wow! This game is Fantastic! The movement got me, so smooth.

Congratulations.

[koiwai]

Thanks! This smooth movement add quite a lot, even though the game is still mostly grid based and turn-based. It was one of the first ideas I wanted to try, and in the beginning, it was only a mechanism for resolving collisions, allowing multiple mobs stand on the same tile for a short time. It works well in combat. It should also work for other things, like plausibly looking pickpocketing, for example.

Btw, I fixed the bug in the random seed generation, it should not give that error any more.

[koiwai]

Fight animation. When an enemy smashes you into a wall, you get briefly stunned (and get a blue "%" notification).

Trying a new cave/dungeon style.

In this screen I met an NPC hero (the orange guy) who explores dungeons too. Heros are not smarter than regular mobs yet, but they are persistent actors, just like the player is. The majority of other mobs are not persistent, and they get "dissolved", so to speak, when the player walks far away from them.

[Mete]

ha, I already updated the game, from time to time I just go to my git folders and do a "git pull"

I found some nice seeds, I usually start a game with "ph" or "dog", ph is nice cause I start with 4 weapons, dog is nice cause there is a war running if I start to walk down and lure the enemies to my "friends" :D

Also, I play this game everyday hehe :D

[alvarop]

No Windows?

[koiwai]

Happy to hear that!   I will try to properly add those new cave tiles in addition to the old ones, and then update the repository. Btw, sometimes, when changes to the game state are significant, the seeds stop working, game saves may stop working too. But that's what you can expect, it should not be a big deal, probably )

Another idea I want to add eventually: After the player dies, you get an option to respawn with a new random character, and continue playing in the same world, so you can complete your unfinished goals. Also, it's interesting to use player's name as a seed for generating the character. Names are not in the game yet, but it sounds fun to be able to choose the same favorite character for a new game.

I have to build it for Windows eventually, but because there was no official release yet, I did not do that. I may try it on the weekend. Cross-compilation is tricky for OCaml, so I should probabily install the compiler on my Windows machine and build it from there.

[koiwai]

1. In the last update, there are two underground biomes: Dungeons and Caves. For now, they just look differently, and usually caves are deeper underground. However, I plan to add 4-6 new cave generators for this new biome. It is possible to make some mobs like caves more than dungeons, and the other way around, but I should add goblinoids first, then they will prefer caves, and the undeads will prefer dungeons.

2. There was a bug in the unit generation code. The weight of a creatures is generated from log-normal distribution, this is a good approximation of real human weights. Once, map simulation got stuck in an infinite loop. The reason was the following: a very light mob with weight 30kg was created, and its strength was set to a negative number. So in a fight simulation, he was running not towards, but away of the enemy, and their fight got stuck in an infinite loop.

3. Also I changed the tileset to make bricks look better, and rocks look like rocks, not like eggs/blobs. Not sure if I succeded, but let's say that this is the next iteration:

[DangerMomentum]

This looks rad, I'll definitely play when there's a Windows build. Following.

[koiwai]

Thanks guys! So I did work on a Windows build, and here it is!

Download for Windows (32 bit): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70985178/wanderers-2014-10-10.zip

The whole thing was rather non-trivial. I have VirtualBox with Win XP. There is Cygwin, MinGW toolchain, and OCaml compiler, also had to locally build SDL for MinGW. Eventually, everything did work well. Though, it took about a day. Next time it will be much easier. I'm really happy I did not run into wierd cross-compilation errors, and the Makefile did not need a lot of extra work.

I also added an option to restart the game when you die. It is more convenient particularly for Windows users who don't run programs from a terminal. Still, running from the terminal is better, b/c it gives you an option to choose the random seed for the game.

When playing, bear in mind it's not the final version at all. The most fun social stuff is not there. Magic (natural energy) is not there. It takes time to decide how to progress, and what's the next feature to add.

[eigenbom]

Thanks, I am reaching for a broader audience ) The more people know about the game, the more feedback I get.
I will be posting some updates about the game and how it is working internally, dungeon generation and other topics that may be of interest to people here.

Here are the game items. Yes, mostly weapons

The items made of different materials have different parameters (damage, weight, attack time). Also, the huge swords and axes are too heavy for a normal character to use; even though there is no strict limit on the item size, they are very impractical. They are also very expensive and it's almost impossible to find one. 

The player must balance their equipment choosing the best armor and weapons that don't encumber their movement too much. You are free to wield two weapons if you don't want get extra protection from the shield. Although, recently, in my most successful run, I had a very good shield and was armored very well.

Cool pixel items

[koiwai]

Cool pixel items

Thanks man, I'm not a really great artist, and finding the best way to use pixels takes time. But it's really enjoyable )

[koiwai]

I'm adding magic to the game. What I'm aiming for is the world where magical energy is omnipresent, flowing through the crust of the planet, through the air, through every creature and every molecule. Those who can take this energy, will be using it even if they don't know any spells.

Practically, there is a new characteristic, you can call it Magic affinity (MGC). It tells you how well the creature interacts with the magical energy, how well it can see, absorb, and accumulate it. (~0.05 is the smallest possible value, ~1.0 is the max, meaning they peprceive and absorb it all).

The energy is accumulated as Energy points (ENG). For now, there is no fancy spellcasting per se, it will be added later, but there is its "vulgar" variant: available energy boosts your normal attacks, particularly the ranged one. When you shoot at an enemy, there is a high chance to shoot a charged bullet/bolt/arrow, which hits with significantly higher damage and momentum.
Melee attacks are boosted too, but this effect is quite unreliable. However, when fully charged with energy, boosted melee damage can be quite high too, I try to make it work primarily as a desperate measure for spellcasters/archers and as an occasional attack boost for swordsmen.

The weaker (and skinnier) a mob is, the better their magical abilities are. For example, players Constitution CNS < 60 (kg) means that they are quite good spellcasters.  The video below shows how you can fight relying on magic and ranged attacks wearing almost no armor:

Real spellcasting will be added in the form of drawing sigils or magic circles on the floor, but I'm not going to add it very soon. Also, the current form of magic has to be balanced of course, but the general idea seems to be working quite well. Ranged attack is fun to play, and you don't have to be a tank to do well. Although, when I started implementing it, I wasn't sure that it would work. So, I'm quite happy about it!

I'm thinking what should be the next feature to implement. Probably, merchants and shops, or some fun AI (e.g. group behavior for mobs?), or some social stuff like reputation and rummors spreading.

[SolarLune]

Hm, this looks interesting. Keep up development - haven't played a contiguous open world roguelike before (I don't think).

[pnch]

Nice pixels and palette, keep it up!
The animated "fog of war" style clear clouds looks way too distracting for me though.

[koiwai]

Hm, this looks interesting. Keep up development - haven't played a contiguous open world roguelike before (I don't think).

Thanks! In fact, open world roguelikes do exist, so in this respect, what I do is not entirely new: Cataclysm, Caves of Qud, Wayward have big contiguous overworld. On the other hand, I have some other features that I havn't seen in roguelikes before, for example the whole world is not static, it's simulated too, and so there is an opportunity for implementing global events, politics, wars, etc. I think, it would make all your actions affect the rest of the world, and the stronger you are, the bigger impact you can potentially make. This is probably what I value the most, but of course this is not a very easy goal.

Nice pixels and palette, keep it up!
The animated "fog of war" style clear clouds looks way too distracting for me though.

Thank you! I agree that the fog does not always look good, especially in villages. I tried different options actually, for example black fog that is more common in games, but it looks a bit too gloomy to me:



Eventually, I made the color of the fog a somewhat different in different biomes/environments, it's darker in the dungeons for example. I could not find how to improve it further. I will try some other options though.. Maybe, something completely different will work better. By the way, you can try to play the game (Win version, October 10) and see for yourself if it's distracting or ok.