Warlock's Dungeon - 1.1 Official Release - A Gauntlet-like

[mwiedmann]

Get your single or two player dungeon-crawling action fix on the CX16 with this "Gauntlet-like". Fight through hordes of monsters to reach the exit on each level. Grab keys, scrolls, treasure, and valuable food along the way. Make it to shop levels to spend your hard fought loot on temporary ability upgrades.

This is a (hopefully) final/official release and now includes in-game music (thanks Crisps!) and support for composite mode. There are 50 levels to fight through, so give it a shot and let me know what you think. Player 2 is now ready so enjoy some 2 player action if you have a controller (and a friend)!

Features:
- Choose from 4 characters (Barbarian, Mage, Druid, Ranger)
- 1 or 2 players!
- With 2 players try different combos of characters. You can even double-up. Is 2 Mages good? Find out!
- There is even a mode where 1 person can control BOTH players. Its a bit wacky but fun!
- 50 levels
- Collect treasure to spend on upgrades when you reach shop levels
- 10 different ranged and melee attack monsters (including the "indestructable" Devil)
- Find: keys (to open doors), magic scrolls (smart-bombs), food (restores health)
- 5 different in-game tunes
- Composite mode support (scales the screen down to fit...best I can do). There is a screen to adjust it.

1.1 Update - Some 2 player bug fixes. Players could get stuck.

Try It Now!

[Daedalus]

Is there a "pause" key?

Considering that a controller is not shipped with the machine, and people with the emulator probably don't have one, the default keys (Few as they are in this case.) should be on the pause screen. I'm not targeting that at THIS game... just that it should be on any game.

Yeah... yeah. I know that back in the day they didn't have pause screens and it was uphill both ways. In the snow. But this is the twenty first century... can't just fall back on that old trope.

Other than that, and bugs like the screen tearing on tile scroll, it seems like a workable port of Gauntlet. It takes a long time to restart with no menu (Gotta reset the computer, load the launcher, navigate to the game's directory, run the game, etc.)

How do you plan on balancing the difficulty with multiple players? Level 1 was not so bad, but level 2 had a single guy that just destroyed me. Too bad I wasted my scroll trying to find the pause key!

[mwiedmann]

Yes there is a pause key. SHIFT on keyboard or SELECT on joypad. It says this when you start the game on the CONTROLS screen right before the game begins. I just retested to make sure and the pausing works. I could repeat that info on the pause screen for anyone who missed it though.

Not sure what you mean by long time to restart. When you die it brings you back to the instruction screens and you can start a new game (just retested that and seems good).

Game balancing with 2 players will take some trial/error. As it stand now, you get extra firepower of the 2nd person, but there is less food/treasure for each person. We will see. Knowing the levels well (like I do since I made them) helps a lot. I can beat all 20 levels on 1 guy (barely, and not always), but the difficultly needs some tweaks.

[Daedalus]

I had found the pause key after reading the intro more carefully. I was also thrown by "Press A button" as "A" is an actual button on the controller. I realize that sounds stupid, but remember I have never seen this game before, I have no idea what keys are used.

You can get through all 20 levels? I can't even get past the first level without having a fraction of my health remaining. In the arcade game, you were supposed to add more quarters (You got like 600 health per.) but obviously you can't do that here. So basically, even if you are never hit, you need to get a food every 100 seconds just to stay even. So I can't, for example, get through a level, then add a quarter to get my health back up right before I hit the exit. That completely changes the dynamics of the game. With the arcade game, it doesn't have to get "harder" with more players since ALL 4 players must spend a quarter every 10 minutes just to stay even against the per-second health hit.

You can actually think of the arcade game as the first "pay to cheat" multi player game. Atari was WAY ahead of their time!

[mwiedmann]

Atari was ahead of the times with the pay to cheat for sure!

As you collect treasure you will be able to spend it on upgrades, including buying food, when you reach shop levels. Right now shop levels are every 5 levels (level 5, 10, 15, etc). So you have that extra source of health. Plus, you get upgrades which can increase your power quite a bit (better attacks, better armor, etc). The overall balance certainly needs some work though and I'll work on it. Maybe there is a difficulty setting. You do really have to make use of choke points to funnel the monsters and of course optimize your scroll usage. You can really wipe out a lot of monsters if used in the right spots.

"Press A button" could be confusing. Maybe I'll change it to ANY button.

Thanks for checking the game out!

[Johan Kårlin]

I think this is very promising, a very interesting game. Actually I am working on something similar. I wonder about the AI of the enemies. It seems that they are moving from tile to tile. They check if there is a free tile in some direction that is closer to the enemy than the current one. If there is one they move smoothly to it, otherwise they wait. Is it correct or are there other considerations? How many enemies can be spawned at the same time? Do you have much time left to spend each frame?

[mwiedmann]

Thanks! Very good questions. Yes, the "AI" does exactly what you said. Once they have a "target tile" then they just move to it for the next few frames. This helps limit the amount of code that is run once they have a target. I do cheat a little though, because monsters only move every-other-frame and I just move them twice as far. The end result is the same but much less code is run each frame this way and lets me have more monsters. If I get performance to where I like it, I may move them every frame to increase visual fidelity. If their moves are blocked, they keep checking every frame. I have a 2D array of the map so they can quickly check if tiles are free. Once a tile is targeted, they "claim" it by marking that tile in the 2D array. It all works fairly well, although I've had (and still have) a few bugs where tiles are not freed up. Also, monsters off screen do not move (Gauntlet is like this too and its an important part of the gameplay). I have some linked-lists (one for active, another for inactive). I keep the lists updated and this helps minimize the number of monsters I have to look at each frame. Its pretty fast but needs some work.

Right now (using the most recent version with the VSYNC fix), you can have a good 50+ monsters on screen before you start seeing slowdowns. This rarely happens though as there are a few limits to how many monsters a generator will spawn, and there is a limit to how many monsters (on and off screen) can exist in a level. I'm still working on performance stuff.

[Johan Kårlin]

Thanks for your answer, clever solution. I am testing to see if I can utilize all 128 sprites at the same time. I have more like a zombie approach where ghosts and goblins move at a speed of just 1/4 of a pixel each frame. By dividing them in groups, this means I only update 25% of them each frame. It seems to work. I use a 2D array like you, but I am trying to figure out if I can make them move as a denser herd or what to call it. Maybe I can gain some time by not moving non-visible ghosts like you, that is smart : ).

[desertfish]

I like the little sprites!

[Xiphod]

...
Other than that, and bugs like the screen tearing on tile scroll, it seems like a workable port of Gauntlet. It takes a long time to restart with no menu (Gotta reset the computer, load the launcher, navigate to the game's directory, run the game, etc.)
...

One thing that might not have been obvious about the X16 is that the "DOS" commands can be used in BASIC programs.

This means when you have a "favorite" program, you can create a "script" (of sorts) that is a BASIC program that goes to the appropriate sub-directory and LOADs the software (or do a BOOT). Something like:

10 DOS"CD:GAMES/FAV1"
20 BOOT

Abbreviated DOS commands were added (like / for loading and "@CD:") but those won't work inside BASIC programs, but all the prior DOS "@CD: command are preserved since they can be placed in a BASIC program.


Another future System ROM idea is to make the F1 keys re-assignable, so you could then assign F8, etc. to these kinds of commands to load your favorites (or assign one to load the launcher itself).

But your comment also gives an idea for two enhancements to the Launcher program:
1) for users to be able to press SPACE or something to "flag" their favorite title and have them added into a "favorites" list that can accessed quickly in the Launcher
2) have the Launcher return to the last valid directory it was in when launching a title.



And, great game to see on the X16!!