Vault of the Vindicator: Playtest (Now finished, see Downloads)

[m00dawg]

Play tested it for a few rounds! I got to level 3 before the purple wizard/warlock person murdered me (both times though second time I was able to get to level 3 really quick). Having the start screen is much better as is the help screen. Really nice changes. Since you were asking for feedback on the discord I came up with a few minor thoughts:

* The intro is really fun! Maybe put "Find Him" in the center? I assume Crisps will have some creepy intro there to help set the start.
* Start being rest and select being pause kinda mess with my head having been so used to start being pause. I can probably get used to that design choice but I noticed if you accidentally press select from the pause menu it ends the game and because I'm used to it the other way around I stumbled on that a few times.
* Splash screen could use a bit of shadows on the text and shading and maybe a low-fi PCM sample of some creepy person laughing or something (I know Crisps is working on the sound and wants all the kb he can get, but shaving a few for a lofi PCM evil laugh could be fun)

I had a 3rd thing but now I can't remember what it was :/ but it was minor. I guess one thing is it'd be nice to see the color changes of the levels sooner? Not sure if that was added in but one of your screenshots on discord had really neat colors.

[Toboter]

Thanks for playing!
The pause screen thing is good to know, I changed that. The splash screen is just the normal Ingame HUD rn. I could maybe change that, but that'd involve drawing yet another screen. We'll see.
The color change is in Level 4. I intended that to be kinda the reward for getting out of the first area for the first time. That next area is mostly wizards, the two wizards in level 3 serve as kinda a gate keeper to ensure you've actually found enought stuff to take on the second area. Though yeah, maybe I should make that level slightly easier, so you die in level 4 rather than 3 and get to see the cool stuff sooner lol.

[Toboter]

Bugfix version:
Should now run on hardware again

[voidstar]

Amazing work here, I still have a copy of XDUNGEON.PRG dated 9/20 that was your "transparent-walls" demo - and now you've got a full game here just a few weeks later.

Just showing the "trails" of where you've been, on the minimap, I think would be the "icing on the cake" to make it feel more "rogue like" to me. That's just how I remember the old text-based rogue games working in mid 80s (I mean "text-graphic", not text-adventure game), it would "reveal" the path you've been (or a little-ways ahead of you). I remember one of those games for the IBM PC, it had this "antman" that was fast and would always get me ^.^ Can't remember the name anymore though.


Controls seem fine, across both keyboard and gamepad.


What limits any kind of "texture" or sprite on the floor and/or ceiling? is that just "left as an exercise" for future version, or is there a technical limitation?

And how about "directional" creatures? Like if we were to approach a creature "from behind"? Would that just basically be an additional "type of creature"? (can a given creature morph its type?)

[Toboter]

Thanks!
Minimap tracing seems possible, the biggest limitation there is loram, which I'm pretty short of.

Textured ceilings and floors are pretty easy, you'd just draw all of them in the field of view before you draw the walls. I thought about doing that, but since that didn't seem that important for the roguelike gameplay (since I didn't need pressure plates for puzzles, as those are a pain to generate), I left it out.

Directional creatures are quite possible (the object struct has a wall type attribute, different from the object type, though rn that's only dynamically changed by the arcane workstation), but there's a cost.

Since the level struct only has one byte per wall (object sprites just being dynamically placed transparent walls), one bit is necessary to mark whether a wall is part of the level or the creature, one to mark whether it's transparent or not, and one bit is currently unused (though you could use it for this purpose that to get 63). So you only get 31 object sprites, which are rn completely used up (a wall type).
In a level based engine you could definitely alleviate this through dynamic loading, but for times sake (and my sanity given I'm not that good or fast of an artist), I cut that.

There's definitely a lot more this engine could do, which is why I'll open source it at Release. I just had to limit it to a scope I could finish in time.

[Cyber]

I'll add one more vote for minimap tracing.

I know many people would say that it is part of the fun to keep map in your head, but it is very hard for me. In similar games I very often took a grid paper, and drew a map as a played.

EDIT: And also I wish the game showed X and Y coordinate of current position.

EDIT2: I'v noticed that for every 2x2 space is used 1 pixel on minimap. And it looks like there is enogh free space on screen to fit minmap twice bigger. This way tracing would look nice.

[Toboter]

Alright, new version!
Added easy mode, minimap tracing and some music for the main areas (rest to come)

I can't really do a full pixel by pixel minimap, there just isn't enough room on a 160x120 playfield.

[Cyber]

Now with minimap it is much more playable for me. With my bad memory I still have problems memorizing where stairs between levels are, but this is much much less problem. ))

I saw you made a release in Downloads section. Congratulations!

I enjoy a lot playing the game, though I don't have much free time, so everytime I played just several levels, and next time it's start over. This made me thinking, have you thought about implementing save progress? Since the map is generated I assume it's a lots of data to save. But still. What are your thoughts?

[Toboter]

Thanks! Regarding saves, the biggest issue is making the save select menu system, since right now there is no menu system at all. Also it takes less than an hour to get to the end, so it doesn't seem that worthwhile.

[Cyber]

Ok, I see you point. This means that I'm really slooow at playing the game. )

May be just one save slot? So no need for menu, just add 2 more hot keys - one to save current state, and another one to load.