Mini Roguelike

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Road Block #1: Simplifying things I want to simplify things as much as possible. From character animations to gameplay systems like before, weapon damage has a range value (ex. 8-10 damage) and it is cool how unpredictable it is while knowing how much maximum damage you can do to enemies. Although from a developer standpoint, it feels like too much work for me to do and to balance not mentioning having a limited time and resources since I'm doing it myself. So I simplified it by having fixed damage amount, same with armories. Continuous Flow When you have a sword that deals 8 damage and found one that deals 10, you already know which is more powerful and won't take you that long to compare while in the middle of a fight. While most of RPG games has inventory screen, my game only has 6 gear slots and is always displayed in the UI. There won't be item keeping involved, when you picked new gear it automatically swaps to your previous one so you better think carefully what to pick up next. This system is inspired by Loop Hero where your item gets swapped with new ones converting it to a useful resource. I want the players to be able act and decide fast. I want them to care more about what they can do rather than taking care of what they have since this is a roguelike, death is inevitable and they will just lose all of their items.

Character Skill and Abilities Like I said before, I want to simplify things as much as possible and there are no ways I can think of simplifying skills. The common thing I see in RPG games are skill trees. Another example is from MOBAs having dedicated skills for each character. "Why not just pick one then move on?" Well it is easy to just pick and do stuff, but for me it kind of feels like I'm might waste an opportunity to get creative. Yes it will save me time from coming up with an idea but I'm close to getting this to a standard type RPG. I want something unique so players will get excited of playing this game. Though if I ran out of juice, I'll just stick to the basics. Conclusion There are a lot of interesting ways that developers have come up to make their games simple yet complex, but games are not always designed to be like that. It could be anything that you want as long as you know what you are doing and it is fun to play.

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CHARACTER STATS An attribute is a piece of data (a "statistic") that describes to what extent a fictional character in a role-playing game possesses a specific natural, in-born characteristic common to all characters in the game. That piece of data is usually an abstract number or, in some cases, a set of dice. Some games use different terms to refer to an attribute, such as statistic, (primary) characteristic or ability. (from Wikipedia) For today's blog, I've started solidifying character stats and made sure the game knows how to calculate each attribute. Disclaimer, I am not mathematician nor expert in math so I've asked the internet for help and start searching for easy formulas that will work in my game.

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MINIMAP Part 3 (On-Screen Minimap) *phew* This feature is a tough one. After countless of hours, I finally managed to cut out the black areas on the minimap. I also managed to make an on-screen map so you can see it on a larger scale. The opacity of the maps are adjustable as well. So much fun working on this but man, it is very tricky dealing with surfaces.

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MINIMAP Part 2 (FOG OF WAR) Heck yeah! Finally added fog of war on the minimap. It looks okay but it isn't really what I am looking for. While playing, it kinda feels like it is covering the entire screen and being able to see clearly every thing in the game is very important specially when the combat starts getting hectic. I want to make that black areas transparent so you can still see through it.

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This took me so much time but I finally made a basic minimap! I am using surfaces to draw the minimap so it doesn't affect the performance that much though it is a bit tricky to make this work. Anyway, I'm so happy that it is finally working. I'm still planning to make this more solid, add some fog of war for places you haven't discovered yet but still keeping it simple.

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DEVELOPER CONSOLE One of the issues I always had whenever I make games is there is no tools for testing. As a developer, I am used to just coding or changing what I specifically need. If I want my player to be invincible, I just code it in the game easy. If I want the game to start at specific room, I just pick the room I need and rearrange it in the project file. It is a bit tedious but it works for me not until I need somebody testing my game. I cannot keep sending new build back and fort just to change something in the code that the tester needs. There has to be something that testers (including me) could use to easily change game's settings in real time. In this project, I've added developer console that only me and testers will have access. Using this, I could manually save or load the game. I can also restart the game in the console without literally closing the game. It can also do commands that can alter characters variables like adding hp and all that kind of stuff. So far it only has few commands and I am planning to add more like god mode, kill all enemies, jump to level and etc. I think this is very helpful and it make playtesting the game much easier.

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Fancy Mouse Cursor I've decided to change the look of the cursor into more fantasy one. By default, it looks like a leather glove that is very much inspired by League of Legends' classic hand cursor. It also changes to sword icon whenever you hover on the enemies that signifies hostile entities. I might provide an option to change to more simpler one but for now it stays medieval look.

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Health Bars & Popups Now I've added health bars of the characters. Whenever you hit an enemy, it's health bar will popup on top of screen so players would have an idea how much more hits to kill it.

Kill Streak System To make killing enemies more interesting, I've added kill streak system that gives bonus multiplier on experience points gain depending on how much enemies the player have killed. Skelly Attack I've also added basic attack animation on Skeleton to test how it looks and how the character would react on its attack.

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Skellies got moves 💀🕺 Welcome to another episode of weird bugs.

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Line up skellies! 💀💀 Encountered a weird bug that made the enemies line up. Lol

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New varieties on weapon/gear Since animating weapons will take a lot of time, I decided to use my old methods in presenting weapon attacks. By flipping the angle, it gives the illusion that it is being swung.

Enemy Collision One of the issues I encountered when performing melee attack is it rapidly drains the enemy health unintentionally. Unlike moving projectile such as bullet or arrow, slash attacks isn’t immediately destroyed upon colliding with enemies instead, it runs a certain amount of frame before getting destroyed. So what happens is it continuously deduct enemy hp while it persist and we don’t want that. Target List So to address the issue, I gave each attacks their own target list where they can store each id of the enemies it already collides with. When enemy A is hit with a slash, it check if it already collides with enemy A and if not, it register as a legitimate HIT then store its id to the list so it wouldn’t get its hp deducted again. My explanation might be a mess, but you get the idea. That is all for these post. Cheers!