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[Loren Schmidt]

Competition Version (10 January, 2010)
Play Tiny Crawl v.0.25

changes:

• All new UI!
• Funky procedural sound (will be improved in future releases)
• Monster search parties start arrive if we stay too long in one level

This competition looks like a lot of fun. I'll be making something too. Cheers to all the other people participating- it looks like we'll end up with a lot of fun games on our hands come January.

I'm working on a streamlined room based RPG. I'm trying to keep the ingredient count nice and low. One other thing I'm trying to do is make the game feel pretty tactile (despite being turn based) through a combination of responsive controls, sound, and effects. The game is playable now, but it's not quite ready to post (it's still pretty rough around the edges). I do, however, have a some goodies for you.

Firstly, here is a demo of an early version of the dungeon generator. This is set to churn out an endless stream of level 1 dungeons:
Dungeon Generation Demo

Secondly, here are a couple of screenshots:

In the first dungeon, an adventurer discovers that eating mushrooms restores health


This is a sample run of the dungeon generator linked to above. Dungeons are large enough that it's costly to clear them fully, so we tend to leave a significant portion of each floor unexplored as we descend.

[yokomeshi]

I like the aesthetic here.  It'd be pretty awesome if each floor had a different palette, which shifts slowly as you descend: level 1 is a cheery blue on white, level 20 is an eerie light grey on purple, level 99 is blood red on black, etc.

[Loren Schmidt]

Yeah, that might be really effective. If I do end up tinting things, I'll definitely do unique level colors. And even if I don't, I'll make sure the levels are visually distinct from one another in some way (tile swaps, etc.).

[Loren Schmidt]

Today I've added a number of new things to the game, including a new armor powerup. There is no experience system. Instead, our character becomes more powerful only through finding powerups littered throughout the dungeon.

There are currently attack powerups

and health powerups (armor).


There are also number of new enemies. There are some higher level enemies that have offensive magic

and vermin



Vermin are numerous, weak creatures which infest dungeon rooms in the lower levels. After a group of them has been wiped out, there are often several invulnerable eggs left on the battlefield. When the player backtracks, the eggs in the room hatch and the new vermin ambush the player.

[Galaxy613]

...didn't know rats hatch from eggs. Neat game mechanic tho.

[SirNiko]

Yeah, that might be really effective. If I do end up tinting things, I'll definitely do unique level colors. And even if I don't, I'll make sure the levels are visually distinct from one another in some way (tile swaps, etc.).

Can you reach LEVEL RED? The fun cannot be halted!

-SirNiko

[Slash - Santiago Zapata]

This looks interesting! 

[Loren Schmidt]

...didn't know rats hatch from eggs. Neat game mechanic tho.

Well they do, you know. They're just very tiny eggs .

Actually my thought was that the sprites were ambiguous enough that I could cast them as weird fantasy monsters. I'll try giving them names and see if that does it. But maybe Oryx was right and I need to use the less recognizable ones .

[oryx]

Actually my thought was that the sprites were ambiguous enough that I could cast them as weird fantasy monsters. I'll try giving them names and see if that does it. But maybe Oryx was right and I need to use the less recognizable ones .

You could use snakes, spiders, worms, flies, scorpions as the egg layers? and use the rats/dogs/wolves/etc on a different themed level?

I should have made a few more weird/less recognizable ones  .

[SirNiko]

Just use eggs. Fantasy games have made larger leaps of logic than egg laying mammals.

-SirNiko

[Inanimate]

The platypus is the ancestor of every mammal in this fantasy world.

[Loren Schmidt]

I'm adding in a mouse-driven interface- the game will be fully playable either with the keyboard or with the mouse. I've got it set up so it hides the cursor and uses a 1 bit sprite instead, but now I have to go hunting and find a good mouse cursor in the Part 1 assets.

The platypus is the ancestor of every mammal in this fantasy world.

It's true. Some platypi and a couple of echidnas landed here in a colony ship several million years ago and begat some egg laying offspring, and it's all been in evolution's hands since then...

[dbb]

I'm adding in a mouse-driven interface- the game will be fully playable either with the keyboard or with the mouse. I've got it set up so it hides the cursor and uses a 1 bit sprite instead, but now I have to go hunting and find a good mouse cursor in the Part 1 assets.

Hurrah for game designers who let the user play the game the way they want to, rather than the way the designer thinks they ought to! Hurrah, I say!

Seriously, I was very impressed with Star Guard and I'm looking forward to this.

[Galaxy613]

I'm adding in a mouse-driven interface- the game will be fully playable either with the keyboard or with the mouse. I've got it set up so it hides the cursor and uses a 1 bit sprite instead, but now I have to go hunting and find a good mouse cursor in the Part 1 assets.

Don't even get a mouse cursor, use a crosshair but make it so when you hold it over something, it inverts the color of the crosshair so you can always tell what's a the crosshiar... just an idea.

[Pixelfish]

Ooooh. I like it. This already looks addicting.

[JaJitsu]

really awesome looking game

[Loren Schmidt]

Currently I'm improving the level generation. The final goal is to make it so that dungeons are rarely, if ever, completely cleared. There should always be unknowns- battles that are unfought and treasures that are just out of reach. In terms of shapes, I'm making the dungeons mostly out of small loops rather than using a forking, treelike structure. This makes exploration a little more unpredictable and also reduces backtracking. Once the basic looping structure is set, a number of short side passages are added.

Here's a current dungeon generation demo:
Dungeon Generation Demo

[JMickle]

this is slowed down so you can see whats going on, right? because it takes forever 

[Loren Schmidt]

I'm working out a few bugs in the level generation, then I'll be moving on to some new spell tabs I'd like to playtest. Spell tabs are magical items that allow us to cast spells. We have a limited number of slots, so we have to pick and choose spells that work well together.

This is a high damage missile attack...

...and this is a lower damage multi-target missile attack

This spell magnifies the effect of the next action

This spell freezes a target, keeping it from attacking but shielding it from damage

This is the reflecting ward. It reduces damage and turns one enemy attack back on the attacker.


There are some more exotic rare spell tabs that I'd like to try as well.

this is slowed down so you can see whats going on, right? because it takes forever  

Yes, this generation demo is slowed down to 10 ms per update so it's possible to see what's going on.

[Loren Schmidt]

Trapped rooms are in now. They work somewhat like the warnings in minesweeper. When we're near a trap, we can sense it

By piecing together this indirect information, it is possible to discover exactly where traps are and thereby deftly avoid actually wandering into the trapped rooms themselves. Should we blunder in our calculations, this happens: