This is a place for the technical (and non-technical) ramblings of a software developer. GH Profile Resume...
I've been playing chess a bit over two years, learning as an adult, and recently I've been thinking about how at the beginner and immediate level there are different "levels" of skill that develop over time. These are somewhat arbitrary in order, but I hope are useful. Level 0 - Making Legal Moves The first level of skill is the ability to make legal moves with the pieces. Knowing that Knights can…
A few days ago I started hacking on another roguelike game. It is early enough to be very under baked, but here is what I have so far: The idea is to create a hacking simulator (like Uplink, CyberKnight Flashpoint, or Hacknet) set as a roguelike with a small side of life simulator. You spend your days doing favors, working a 9-5, or working on personal projects to build your rig's strength and…
I've finally hit the finish line, and not a day too soon. I'll need some space before wanting to work more on a game like this, it was a marathon for sure. Today I added: A full set of balance passes on starts/items/enemies Added damage piercing for some skills/poison/burning so armor doesn't stop them A number of bug fixes and crash fixes There are some areas I am not completely thrilled with the…
I missed the update last night because I was exhausted after a long week, so this will cover the last two days. Day 12 was primarily planning and starting to code up all of the upgrade items for the game. There are 6 runes and the generic category, each with 3 upgrades, so 21 in total. Day 13 was wrapping that up, then creating all 36 enemies across 5 difficulty tiers with stats and attacks. After…
A shorter day after a lot of grinding the last week and a half. Features: Visual only tile variations to provide some visual interest An options screen to change sound levels (preferences saved on Desktop) A basic help screen to display controls and some hints.
I took the day off half for other reason but it meant I got a lot done today: A bunch of status effects to flesh out items/enemies: Lucky, Unlucky, Agile, Blind, Slow, Stun, Rooted Added music and some very basic sound effects Skills with time base cooldowns Ported the game to webassembly (as you can see below) There are only a few features that might make the cut for this week: Autofight from…
Most of the work today was to flesh out differences between the various enemy types and add some complexity to the combat. More status effects: Quick, Weakness, Lifesteal Added a mild randomness (-1,0,1) to damage rolls and scaled up number magnitude to make it work. Added a last turn log to the bottom of the window "On hit" for weapons to apply some effect "Eternal" status effects, for a status…
A shorter day of hacking, but making progress on systems for polish and additional content: Intelligent marked enemies remembers a players last position when they disappear from line of sight and head there before wandering more Tooltips Defense Stat Status Effects: Might, Protection, and Repeating effects for Damage over Time and Heal over Time effects
Another big day of development, with a focus on getting the "flow" from map to map working with a selection of starting equipment and a upgrade every map. Long term I hope to replace random choices with crafting based on the rune you picked up each map, but this is good enough for now (and for a 14DRL in general). I also almost tripled the number of enemies kinds, and made them get more difficult…
Today is the longest day I'll have the entire game jam, so I tried to make the most of it. Major feature: A skill system to replace hard coded "ranged attack" Charged based skill (a potion you can drink a few times per mission) Spawning the goal item, picking it up, and exiting the level Title screen, Victory screen Two new kinds of map generators (Cellular Automata, Drunk Walk) based off of Hands…