Worklog for morduun
Worklog 1
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Back in action! Been a while, so the first thing I did was go through
the loop and optimize a few calls. I think I got a few cycles out of
the deal, though I hate replacing nice, neat function calls. Rewriting the monster waypointing logic, and having much more luck this time. In fact, it's safe to say that waypointing is finally working properly; it's destination changing that's a little off-kilter this time, and that's a much easier nut. Expect Alpha 2, with all 6 trap types and two kinds of monsters patrolling the dungeon, some time next week... |
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| Grrrrr. Bloody monsters! I've come a long way in understanding exactly what the old AI routines are doing, and the plan I formed to translate the old AI to the real-time environment works well enough to go with (ie, not perfect, but good enough, and beats the heck out of rolling my own AI!). It's an awesome feeling to flip wireframe on and watch the monsters navigate the rooms and the corridors... Of course, I =have= to bloody turn wireframe on, because inevitably the stinking stupid things fail to completely follow my carefully coded AI, and so in short order end up either in a Mexican standoff with each other or stuck on a doorway with a protruding arch. I've had one tenacious ant manage to stay mobile for about five minutes (and he WAS very cool to follow around), but eventually he got stuck as well. *&#$&#^*$!!! The logic is clear, the code somehow fails to conform to the logic, and debugging is definitely not my strongest suit. If I can solve this one tiny, insignificant little problem I'll be able to move on (and even release a new demo), but for now I'm stuck on it. Time to play some Wizardry 8. Grrrrr. Bloody monsters! |
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brogue jumped to version 0.4.0 with the completion of all six original
rogue trap types: teleport, bear, sleep gas, pit, dart and rust. All of
them work well, and all come accompanied with animated models, particle
effects, sound effects and so forth where appropriate. I'm proud of
the way they came out, and while I was playing with my simple particle
engine I threw in some dungeon dressing -- there are a few random points
in the tunnels now that drip water. Nothing big, but it's fun to be
trotting around in the dungeon and hear the drips get farther and
closer. ;) Also, as a result of some very helpful feedback from the
Blitz IRC gang, I've converted the game to achieve steady gameplay on
any rig, regardless of framerate. Still having some trouble with
tweening and RenderWorld, but I'm sure it'll come. The next milestone is a big one: monsters. The deeper I dig into the old sources, especially in the monster code, the nastier parts of them are. There are a LOT of globals, a lot of wild assumptions, and some =extremely= ugly design hacks that work fine for a turn-based ASCII game but totally ruin anything approaching realtime (one, for instance, completely circumvents the main game loop while the rogue hangs around paralyzed. Yikes!). Having said that, though, I've finally got all of the old movement code translated from C into Blitz, and by sacrificing some grey cells I've come up with a gameplan to make the old movement routines work in tandem with 3D waypoints in realtime. There is a LOT of work to do before a playable demo with patrolling and attacking monsters becomes available, but the method is clear now, at least, and I'm making headway. If I'm especially lucky and/or inspired, a playable demo with working monster AI may be available the second week of January. |
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First public release to get a feel for how the engine's performing on a
variety of boxes, find bugs I haven't seen yet, etc. Not much
functionality change from 0.3.1, though one real trap is in now, there
are pick-up sounds for some objects, and the whole thing has been
converted to use Terabit's data packing routines. Interested parties can download the beta here. |
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Stairs are now in, as are both EdzUp's random dungeons and BasicGamer's
perfect mazes. Levels choose randomly between these variants on
creation, and all stocking routines work perfectly with them. I'm
having some strangeness in the player placement occur here and there,
but other than that oddment things are moving along. Rudimentary traps are in; for now I'm displaying them as translucent red boxes, so I know they've actually been placed properly. Implementing them is going to be a little odd, as Blitz doesn't have any native means of detecting collision but not affecting the movement of the colliding entities! I've created some simple models to represent traps in the game, and am trying my best to make them inconspicuous enough to stumble into, but spottable if you're really cautious. Spurred on by gema's post on internet data transfer through CGI, brogue also now has an internet-enabled high-score board. It's currently rudimentary and does not do any encryption or security, but it does maintain a top-ten list of the highest scores, and does some basic error detection and information verification. The code to enable it in BB is also implemented, so while it's somewhat premature (as there's no game to play yet!), when the game IS playable, the net scoreboard will be available for competitive solo Rogues. Next up: finishing trap collision & effects, basic monster placement, and support for inventories -- both player and monster! |
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I've started work on a rogue clone (brogue = blitz rogue) with a twist
-- this one's as true to the original sources as possible, but instead
of the traditional turn-based, top-down, ASCII-art gameplay, I'm
throwing all that out and turning it into a first-person realtime
dungeon hack. In a slight departure from the original, I've nearly finished incorporating EdzUp's random dungeon generation code, and I'm working on putting in functionality to create a perfect maze as a level variant as well, so there will be a bit more level types to play in than rogue's original 9 rooms. In order to keep the rest of the gameplay as true as possible to the original, I'm working from the original rogue 5.3 C source and porting a fairly large percentage of it over. The original level creation and stocking code is, in fact, completely ported as of now, and I'm moving on to the next stage of the alpha, which is the placement of stairs and traps in the level. Also in keeping with the original, when complete brogue will be freeware and open source -- so keep your eyes peeled, and let me know if there are any special bits you'd like to see in the game! |