Development log

October 2, 2016 ยท View on GitHub

  • 2016-10-02:

    • Bring in new svglover library
    • Add goblin, mouse, bear and dog images
    • Make NPC icons get drawn while visible
    • Update to svglover-1.0.4
    • Add compressed SVG loading
    • Randomize NPC image selection
    • Recreate some images for better background integration
    • Move player health bar to reusable function
    • Made v0.0.4 release
    • Linecount 6742 not counting libraries

  • 2016-09-28 - 2016-10-02:

  • 2016-09-27:

    • Finished porting SVG to Love converter to Lua library, svglover.
    • Further research (translation)

  • 2016-09-26:

    • Begin porting SVG to Love converter to Lua library.
    • Uncovered lots of potentially useful images.
    • Further research (translation)

  • 2016-09-23:

    • Extend list of useful Unicode characters
    • Implement svg2love to allow importing SVG vector graphics from primitive. This is now the hands down plan for a graphical style for the cut-scene/NPC/whatever other graphics may be required.

  • 2016-09-22:

    • Add list of useful unicode characters for later use in monster/item art
    • Discover interesting tool for graphics, primitive

  • 2016-09-21:

    • Download male death noises, integrate and process ouch and death noises
    • Made v0.0.3 release (win32, OSX, .love)
    • Linecount 6629

  • 2016-09-20:

    • Default initial character placements at stairs
    • Play downstairs noise at start
    • Fade in at start
    • Stairs remain visible on the map after being seen
    • Draw NPC labels over fog of war
    • Simplify NPC drawing code
    • Fix inter-map diagonal movement bug
    • Correct status (health) display text offset
    • Locate, download, process and integrate noises for swinging weapons (misses)
    • Linecount 6419

  • 2016-09-19:

    • Fix bug where monsters can move to player's new location if a door is opened by the player
    • Implement some doors randomly being pre-opened when generating natural_cavern

  • 2016-09-18 (D-day, 17 days used):

    • Enable modal dialogs
      • Create/test/debug a generic selection mechanism for modal dialogs
    • Adjust difficulty (remove bears from upper levels)
    • Switch to double-size fonts for readability in response to user feedback
    • Downloaded more samples (mostly female death noises, some others)
    • Reset groundfeatures on map change
    • Made v0.0.2 (Final ARRP) release (win32, OSX, .love)
    • Linecount 6351

  • 2016-09-17 (1 day remaining / 16 days used):

    • Make character health percentage display bar show depleted portions in darker red
    • Study combat systems and decide on something that can be implemented today
    • Add armour and weapon information to NPCs
    • NPC combat system
    • Permadeath
    • Add NPC health
    • Make battles leave blood pools
    • De-duplicate blood pools
    • Make player structure similar to NPCs
    • Make good messages in combat a different color
    • Notify player when things die
    • Made v0.0.1 release (win32, OSX, .love)

  • 2016-09-16 (1-2 days remaining / 15 days used):

    • More work on Brogue dungeon generation port (this is eating so much time!)
    • Fixed doors issue
    • Made inter-level fades work and got tweening happening (switched from tween.lua to flux library)
    • Additional audio modifications
    • Impact sounds (identification, processing)
    • Add impact noises for player hits
    • Add new NPC midnight_jelly
    • Make wall impact and fighting different arcade-style visual effects
      • Re-adjust these
    • More ambient tracks for natural_cave area
    • NPC movement complete-ish (monsters will attack and follow but currently cannot open doors)
    • Fixed bloody footstep bug
    • Monsters make noise when noticing player
    • Some monsters always make noise while moving (midnight_jelly)
    • Make monsters not run in to one another
    • Make monster respect closed doors
    • Make monster not spawn on the player, and vice versa
    • Make stuck (shut in) monsters noisy
    • Make seen doors remain visible when out of line of sight
    • Players become 'unseen' by monsters when they re-enter a level they have previously visited
    • Monsters attack players
    • Fix door closing to be impossible if NPC-occupied
    • Shake screen when hit by monsters, semi-randomly
    • Linecount 5924

  • 2016-09-15 (2-3 days remaining / 14 days used):

    • More work on Brogue dungeon generation port (this is eating so much time!)

  • 2016-09-14 (3-4 days remaining / 13 days used):

    • Fix bug related to non-halvable tile resolutions from different screen resolutions
    • Update linecount tool
    • Processed and integrated 'pickup' noises (8 bit stuff sounds out of place), 'drop' noises (not yet in use), 'breathing' noises (not yet in use), 'stairs' noises
    • More research (Scythians may have influenced Dian culture: pole worship, Palaung/Karen origins in Mongolia, Pyu city-states thought to have used 'Sak' language family, etc.)
    • Changed quit from escape to shift+Q (preparation for modal menu display)
    • Made icons for future standing with religious factions
    • More work on Brogue dungeon generation port
      • Improved tilemap_show function for additional debugging clarity
      • More work on cellular automata based caverns
    • Ordered key list in help output
    • Beginnings of door-spiking
    • Added new bear NPC, including locating and processing sounds
    • Half-implemented fade-outs between levels using new tween library
    • Linecount 5299

  • 2016-09-13 (4-5 days remaining / 12 days used):

    • Discolor then slowly color-shift back to normal player footsteps when treading in blood or water
    • Added the moss ground feature
    • Some research in to fantasy creature systems
    • Some research in to Buddhist, Chinese, Hindu, and Tai mythology
    • More work on Brogue dungeon generation port (very time consuming)
      • Many additional tilemap functions to support Brogue-style dungeon generation algorithms
      • Most room generators (except cellular automata based cavern type) working
      • Mostly everything else still broken
    • Processed 'pickup' noises (8 bit stuff sounds out of place)
    • Linecount 4857

  • 2016-09-12 (5-6 days remaining / 11 days used):

    • Began the day by reading some studies of level generation algorithms in Brogue, documenting a few more issues and solutions, and brainstorming further about what will be easier/harder to get working in time for ARRP.
    • New RNG from rotLove library
    • Reduced background NPC vocality
    • Footprint alpha variance
    • Move information overlays to edge of screen
    • Create new natural_cavern area type as beginning of ARRP 2016 release
      • Port Brogue's C dungeon generation algorithms to Lua for this area type
    • Add new tilemap.lua source file for tilemap manipulation related functions
    • Auto-replace depth reading with area name at surface
    • Player spawns at stairs after ascent/descent
    • Normalize world-shift to new area load function
    • Player health display
    • Make seen tiles and footprints properly remembered/retrieved when changing dungeon levels
    • Added shack library for screen shaking
    • Added FPS to coordinate overlay
    • Re-enable kills
    • Pools of blood after kills
    • Make pools of blood sound like treading in water
    • Louder liquid footfalls
    • Better blood pools
    • Located, downloaded and processed proper sounds for doors (8 bit noises too out of context)
    • Linecount 3330

  • 2016-09-11 (6-7 days remaining / 10 days used):

    • Day off, mostly collected and distilled ideas about game direction, features and issues.
    • Made the decision to further circumscribe the 2016 ARRP release's scope to dungeon-only.
      • This was partly on account of available time, partly more exposure to Brogue, and partly listening to the Roguelike Radio expisode on coffee-break roguelikes.
      • The hope is that by focusing on a smaller game the playability will be higher and the initial release more successful/interesting.
      • This does not circumscribe later releases from working toward the original, larger scope.

  • 2016-09-10 (7-8 days remaining / 9 days used):

    • Generate tai_cave_entrance area
    • Fixed some area generation and transition related bugs
    • Made stairs work
    • Better initial world generation
    • Work on tai_cave area generation
    • Lose footprints on area change
    • In tai_village made buildings not spawn adjacent
    • Implement random NPC movement
    • Add background NPC noises
    • Stop music and ambient sound when changing areas
    • Make background NPC noises fade with distance
    • Make trees different shades of green
    • Make goblin NPCs vocal
    • Fix handling of moving in to undefined world areas
    • Downloaded and processed many more open licensed footstep noises
    • Support multiple ground types for footfall audio and make that work
    • Add rapid-shimmering water
    • Adjust sounds and graphics
    • Fix subterranean footprints
    • Linecount 2712

  • 2016-09-09 (8-9 days remaining / 8 days used):

    • Improve tilemap drawing routines to utilize list of currently/ever seen tiles
    • Restore cross-area sounds such as footfalls
    • Fix bounds-checking on new draw routines
    • NPC generation function to structure-generic format
    • Bounds checking on character movement (attempts to leave current play area)
    • Auto-placement of unplaced NPCs in loaded areas
    • Area name display
    • Case study on tai_village area regarding procedural generation: potential features vs. time constraints.
      • Decided to currently implement:
        • No day/night delineation
        • No season delineation
        • Add area-specific field of view (eg. day/above-ground = all)
        • Add area-specific ground colours
        • Add area-specific tile types
    • Implemented area-specific ground colours
    • Implemented procedurally generated river in Tai village
    • Implemented procedurally generated bridge over river in Tai village
    • Implemented area-specific field of view
    • Added chicken, rooster and water_buffalo NPCs, including identifying and normalizing lots of freely licensed audio
    • Made bridge look sorta log-constructed
    • Enhanced free space search function to allow arbitrary-size area search
    • Added randomly placed buildings
    • Added randomly placed trees
    • Basic wilderness generation
    • Majority of area-switching logic
    • Linecount 2383

  • 2016-09-08 (9-10 days remaining / 7 days used):

    • Wasted the whole day on field of view re-implementation
      • Wound up with a half-working implementation that infinite-loop-crashes in large rooms because the algorithm is imperfect, looks like hopscotch (new roguelike? :)
      • Made a simple area shading mode which kinda works (ignores tile geometry)
    • Finally got the rotLove precise version working ... even though its callback arguments were wacky. Phew!
    • Convert all display functions to LOS/POV only
    • Added partial visibility fog to peripheral vision squares
    • Remember and display seen tiles
    • Basic (simplified) world generation
    • Beginnings of area-specific tile and name generation
    • Lots of work on world area loading (properly dynamic)
    • Linecount 1971

  • 2016-09-07 (10-11 days remaining / 6 days used):

    • Further logo design work
    • Add further structure to NPCs (different sound types, etc.)
    • Alter directory tree and code structure to support segregated NPC metadata (one NPC per source file)
    • Created central function to insert NPCs to map
    • Created OO class-like setup() function to instantiate NPCs with unique properties
    • Added goblin NPC
    • Sliced up and normalized goblin sounds
    • Moved villagers to tai_villager_male and tai_villager_female NPC definitions with appropriate name generation
    • Added akha_villager, hmong_villager, tibetan_villager, yi_villager NPCs
    • Added eyes and tails to mice and dogs
    • Created generic areas structure including a tai_village area type with appropriate name generation
    • Ascii-normalized input text due to UTF-8 errors with Hmong villager name generation
    • Shortened list of town music for moodier first impression
    • Reported occasional crash in rotLove
    • Integrated alternate dungeon generator Astray, tested various options
    • Made music restart (new background track) when 'ascending' / 'descending' (not yet functional)
    • Decided to go for ARRL 2016 ... 9 days remaining!
    • Restructured the project to a new repository and moved it to Github
    • Linecount 1302

  • 2016-09-06 (11-12 days remaining / 5 days used):

    • Added help popup to display key commands
    • Added escape key to quit
    • Added up and down stair graphics, ascend/descend commands, relevant messages
    • Fixed small bug in beautify routine
    • Colorized messages
    • Added hostile NPC ("Dog"), different display and killing
    • Added NPC-specific sounds
    • Generated many more sound effects
    • Added diagonal movement support
    • Downloaded many ambient sounds
    • Downloaded many dog sounds
    • Added ambient sounds
    • More legible log message display latency
    • Downloaded Audacity
    • Sliced up many new sounds (dog)
    • Reorganized sound directories
    • Fixed bug in NPC killing
    • Reviewed rotLove demos
    • Began some design work on logo
    • Linecount is 977

  • 2016-09-05 (12-13 days remaining / 4 days used):

    • Broke drawing routines in to disparate functions, performed timing analysis
    • Removed significant debug output
    • Added limitation to footprint trail length
    • Added equipment popup and data structure extensions, enabled display of weapon stats in inventory
    • Integrated SLAM audio manager
    • Simplified rotLove/SLAM library require to same directory

  • 2016-09-04 (13-14 days remaining / 3 days used):

    • Downloaded more music and categorized music in to place genres
    • Language-based name generation
    • Began overall world generation
    • Pixel font evaluation + selection for clarity
    • Shadow-based labels
    • Acquired Bfxr 8-bit sound generator
      • Created first few sound effects
    • Brainstormed ethnic class system
    • New generation algorithm (cellular -> brogue)
    • Implemented doors (generation, display, opening, closing)
    • Implemented autopickup and inventory system
    • Implemented inventory display when 'i' is pressed
    • Began NPC movement
    • Linecount is 659

  • 2016-09-03 (14-15 days remaining / 2 days used):

    • Tile decorations
    • Footprints
    • Selected and downloaded appropriately licensed music

  • 2016-09-02 (15-16 days remaining / 1 day used):

    • Basic movement