Game-play concept for Rogue-Like project.

EDIT(7 July 2013): Code moved to github: https://github.com/zskilz/manband
github.io page not up yet, sorry, been busy. To play download the zip and open manband.html in Chrome or FireFox (Requires webGL).

Ok, so making a fully fledged Rogue-like in three weeks was a bit unrealistic... but considering I didn't know three.js when I started, I think I did ok, though unfortunately I'm one day late on delivering something playable (on Chrome at least).

Here is what is missing, or buggy, from the game-play experience:

• EDIT: Firefox, weapon sprites not showing... 
• There is a bug where the  bites from small zombies are ineffectual - I know why, and I will fix later.
• Inventory management. 
• The ammo indicator needs a reload display to let you know when you can shoot.
• Improved passive AI to help avoid structures.
• Flocking, for group behaviour.
• Group commands with the right click.
• A proper map with multiple arenas.
• Game events - for dialogue, death-screens, etc.
• Help screen with legend.

The graphics are very debug, but I make no excuses for this... The focus is still game-play. I will only focus on polish once the game-play is to my satisfaction. 

So there you have it. Deadlines are silly, and silly people like me always tend to over-estimate their abilities. To complete the above list I now guess would take maybe another week... but then again it could be two, or three!

Quite a bit of work went into this project so far, and if you cruise the code you'll notice that many parts are still in development and left dangling uselessly, hoping to be used soon. So, much of what you don't see, has some place-holder code waiting to be implemented... but then again lots of code is just plain not there yet.

Next up: As a priority, I will do some bug fixes, and add any improvements to the inventory system since currently the weapon with the highest damage points gets automatically selected, which means that you need to reload and try avoid some pickups to try others. Also, a reset button is desperately needed.

After the important fixes, I suspect the pace of development will slow down since I need to spend more time on polishing my personal website, and to focus on getting possible financing so I can hopefully make games for a living...

Anyway, go check out the game-play demo here

That link again: https://github.com/zskilz/manband

Game challenge 2 update.

TL;DR: My grand Rogue-like game idea is turning into a zombie shooter... NOOOOooooooo!

I've bitten off more than I can chew and as of today, I broke the combat system, the loot system is in a primitive state, and the team artificial intelligence is, well... let's just say you can't call it intelligent.

I'm busy fixing the combat system to be more projectile friendly... If I don't get it to work I can fall back to the melee-only system whose implementation I'm not happy with. I aim to have a playable demo up on monday, but it will be the equivalent of the 1st week of the 1st project in terms of being presentable. The focus will be on core game-play concepts.

The following sacrifices will have to be made to the great deity of Keeping-timely-dead-lines:

• Player vs. world only - the AI is still too dumb. 
• Loot will be kept in it's primitive fps-pickup style of functioning... and since it's single-player, no point in rushing the team loot management.
• Since the AI is dumb, you going to have zombies, because zombies are dumb... sorry.
• If any other characters appear, they'll be about as bright as the zombies.

There is currently a nice fluidity to the game-play I hope players will appreciate; in spite of the lack of inspired  graphical representation.

Something completely different

TL;DR: The new project is coming along... one week left!

So, I'm getting along with my Rogue-like project which is currently consuming most of my time. Things are looking better but the game-play isn't near the point where a public presentation is wise. The initial set of characters will be tiny and you can expect about four types of weapons and three types of armour as loot. Coins might make an appearance, but only as upkeep for your army, acting as a pacing mechanism to add urgency. The upkeep rate will also be proportional to difficulty level.

I have settled on microphysics.js to temporarily provide dynamics. I will need more time to properly research physics library options for html5 development. The options are varied and solutions that use CPU or OpenCL acceleration would be preferable.

Anyway, there's the work-in-progress screen-shot and I apologise because it isn't very pretty :

The brave adventurer surrounded by dogs.

Progress on Rogue-like with working title "manband":

• Adapted terrain example to generate the arenas using Perlin noise. (I'd like to spend more time in a future post on this...)
• An arena can be defined with a small set of parameters, enabling random generation or defining tile-sets in a JSON file.
• Basic character class with RPG-related stats.

What's next?

• microphysics.js sphere/AABB limitation limits structure placement to axis-aligned orientation only. 
• Terrain dynamics will have to be faked - abstracting dynamics to spheres-on-a-plane and setting the sprite heights directly from the terrain's data.
• Character dynamics and passive AI.
• Loot management.

I plan to use dat.gui for tweaking character parameters during testing and for the loot management system.

Till next time...

Bump in page-views.

TL;DR: Some people came to look at my blog, and now I'm blogging about it...  yeah.

My blog received a welcome boost in views when kineticjs referenced my first personal game challenge which used their library... Thank you kineticjs.

What this whole experience has opened my eyes to is the power of market-specific references. Being referenced on a site that deals with specialist information attracts a considerably larger audience than posting about it on google+ or facebook if you're not known in your field.

Meanwhile, in unrelated news...