Roguelike inspired pbbg

[Chris]

I'm gathering ideas on this:

A very simple RPG. One dungeon which you explore, at the bottom an amulet to steal/wizard to slay. The main idea is that it is very easy to made (I'm short on time, max 2 months to work on this).

The game lasts for 30 days (that's aproximately how long it takes to beat it). After you win you can restart but this time you will have access to hidden locations. New turn (action point/move) generated every 30-60 minute. It concentrates on singleplayer.


Idea:
You start in the dungeon, and go all down. From time to time you have a choice (go left/right), but no going back to previously explored areas. As you go you fight monsters and collect gold. Also can find some objects (obelisk, fountain) that grants some bonuses. No equipment to find (or very simple weapon/armour which just increases power of the weapon). Sometimes you can meet a merchant to buy things (food, potions, scrolls) or altair to exchange gold for power.
There are total of 8-12 items in the game, plus weapon level, armour level. I wonder if there should be a character advancement...

[Sinzygy]

One thing that appeals people to roguelike games is the exploration factor. Actually, the whole game focuses around exploring hidden doors and treasures. In your above description you completely erased that point (presenting the user with the choice of which direction to take isn't much of exploring, especially if you can't turn back).

[Dasein Fiasco]

Exploring and INTERACTING with the environment (one and the same?). NetHack is enjoyable because and only because of its quasi-procedural world generation and the permutations of interactions with it.

[beam]

You guys are already way beaten. My friend has made one that includes a full inventory system, spells, abilities, classes, intelligent enemies, everything. It's almost as complex as ADOM, the only thing is that it's not randomly generated. It's like a PBBG in the fact that it has locations like The Streets, Sewers, etc, except they're all static. Well, the maps are static, but the enemies and items are random. Since he's still working on it, I'll ask him for permission to put a link here to show you guys, and edit this post later.

Lately, I've been working on a randomly generated AJAX roguelike. Once it's further along I'll upload it.

[Chris]

lol, the exploration part was supposed to be the strong point here

OK, forget about roguelike, it will have nothing to do with this, we are talking about MMORPG.

Imagine a typical RPG (like LoTGD) wher you click "hunt for monster" and "heal" and then "buy equipment", next repeat. Now, my idea is to introduce to the hunting part an element of exploration. So, if you go right you reach goblins castle, if left swamps. In addition you can't return to the city to heal anytime, but need to either use your resources (potion) or wait till you meet a healer or merchant.

[beam]

So it's basically a MUD now?

[beam]

I got a basic working version of my roguelike engine up. It uses PHP/Javascript, and it keep tracks of player sessions based on IP address. At some point I will come up with some sort of user key/cookie thing, but for now it works fine. All you can do at the moment is move around on a randomly generated maze, and save your game. Check it out at http://tinydinosaur.com/hack/

[Zeggy]

Wow, that is amazing
You should try something like that with images next!
I've got something similar, except mine is very slow
http://www.bbgamezone.net/map/index.php
(Use arrow keys)

[beam]

Images in a roguelike? HA

[Dasein Fiasco]

Wow, that is amazing
You should try something like that with images next!
I've got something similar, except mine is very slow
http://www.bbgamezone.net/map/index.php
(Use arrow keys)

Cool! You might be able to make it more performant by, if you're not already doing so, buffering the tiles in the immediate vicinity, and then instead of redrawing on each movement, manipulate the CSS to move the background - hell, you could probably get moderately smooth scrolling out of it. Only make the postbacks in order to retrieve more tiles when the player sprite starts approaching the end of the buffer.

[Dasein Fiasco]

I got a basic working version of my roguelike engine up. It uses PHP/Javascript, and it keep tracks of player sessions based on IP address. At some point I will come up with some sort of user key/cookie thing, but for now it works fine. All you can do at the moment is move around on a randomly generated maze, and save your game. Check it out at http://tinydinosaur.com/hack/

Just out of curiosity, what algorithm are you using to generate your maps? Did you come up with your own, crib the one from Rogue, did you elect to go top-down or bottom-up, are you using actual edges or just strangely shaped room divisions, etc.?

[beam]

Cool! You might be able to make it more performant by, if you're not already doing so, buffering the tiles in the immediate vicinity, and then instead of redrawing on each movement, manipulate the CSS to move the background - hell, you could probably get moderately smooth scrolling out of it. Only make the postbacks in order to retrieve more tiles when the player sprite starts approaching the end of the buffer.

It's only drawn once, and it's drawn by PHP as the HTML loads. Javascript just changes the tiles that need to be changed. Little to no slowdown there.

Just out of curiosity, what algorithm are you using to generate your maps? Did you come up with your own, crib the one from Rogue, did you elect to go top-down or bottom-up, are you using actual edges or just strangely shaped room divisions, etc.?

The map generation is actually very simple. First, it makes a completely maze. Then, it randomly adds "rooms", or just some big empty rectangles to the maze. Finally it removes all of the dead ends and removes unncessary walls.

[Dasein Fiasco]

It's only drawn once, and it's drawn by PHP as the HTML loads. Javascript just changes the tiles that need to be changed. Little to no slowdown there.

What do you mean here by "drawn", and where are you saying the bottleneck exists? The interface is in fact sluggish, and I can also reproduce flickering when I encounter a new title. I can also buffer my input and visually "jump" across the map.

[beam]

That's because you're messing it up on purpose. It works fine under normal use. You wouldn't complain to a machinist if you tossed a wrench into the gears of his machine.

Plus, I'm still not sure of what you're talking about as far as slowdown, bottleneck, redraw, etc. goes. All it is is a bunch of span tags that are part of the normal HTML. Every time you move, the only two spans that are changed are where you moved to, and where you moved from. The whole screen is never redrawn, only two tiles.