games

Stabby 7DRL Challenge 2013 Post-Mortem & What’s going on

Hello everyone, Long time no post, as some like to say. And the last post was announcing my 7DRL, which may look like it was a runaway project. I did however change the project status to “Failure” when the time was up, a gesture that – by folks at RLR – meant I cared. And I did. I still do. This article is meant to be the usual post-mortem of a software project, highlighting both good and bad things that happened.

Stabby 0h

Hello visitors, As with last year, I’m taking part in the 7 Day Roguelike Challenge. Last time my game was a simple twist on the roguelike formula, making it more into an action game than a deep tactical stuff. I’ve also used a modified code from the python+libtcod tutorial that almost everyone and they mother used by now. However, this was pretty much my first game jam, and I have been doing any coding for only about 6 months back then.

Sil is now on AUR

Disclaimer [Added Nov 2017]

The version of the AUR Package I created can still be found here https://github.com/aur-archive/sil.
However, I didn’t migrate it to the new git format in 2015, so while the link you find below works, it now leads to a new package created and maintained by someone else.
Still leaving this up for bragging rights or archiving reasons.

Spaced \o/

After a really long break I took from dev and this blog I’ve decided to do some actual work again. Behold, Spaced. This is after a week of work separated by several weeks of inactivity. Originally attempted for 7DFPS, severely overestimated my abilities, so now it’s just a small project I do on the side. Written in python (source here), using SFML for graphics and input. The tech is called raycasting, and is twenty something years old, used among others by Wolfenstein 3D, called the grandfather of FPS games.

Warden – 24h left

I’m almost done! The main game is mostly complete, I’ve added a high score system and screen that shows your highest 10 scores. To be added still are the Big Bad Boss, the game ending (I’ve decided that I don’t want an infinite game after all), and the help screen. I am considering doing some graphical niceties like blood spatters and less rigid fov, but that’s on ‘Would Be Nice If’ list.

So, it has come to this

I’ve failed with Artifact. The project I’ve envisioned for 7DRL Challenge is too large, too complex for my programming skills for now. Also my code base sucks. I’m putting Artifact on back-burner for undefined amount of time. But I want to revisit this idea sometime in the future, so not all is lost. King is asleep, long live the King No worries, after some rants on #rgrd and wasting a day, I’ve come up with an idea for a smaller scope game that I have a chance to finish on time, Saturday 11:45 CET.

Artifact, Update 1 (46h in)

It’s not going well. I have managed to split my codebase from firstrl (dead link) into several files, removed some things that I didn’t need and create a ‘global variable object’ that handles all the important thing I’ll have to have saved. The main problem right now? Game’s main logic is not flexible enough to handle several mouse-checking requests every libtcod frame. It is bad, I cannot make mouse movement work with what I have.

Ready, set, go!

As of now, 11:45 CET (GMT +1) 10th March 2012 I’m typing “git init” and start coding my 7DRL – Artifact. My previous plans of making daily updates may be unrealistic. Main goal updates feel more natural. If you are still interested in my game, check my previus post that explains what Artifact is supposed to be in seven days. Cheers! M.

On libtcod fog of war

Google is a curious device. It points its users to my blog post tagged ‘libtcod (dead link, go to https://bitbucket.org/libtcod/libtcod ) fog of war’, despite it not having much to do with actual instructions on how that works. I’ve decided to write an actual post about it, so you won’t be disappointed next time you click the google link pointing to my blog. Read on if that’s why you’re here.