The evolution of gameplay.

“Renowned tradition of gamedev – write design document after few years of development and couple concept switches”.

^_^. As I wrote before, «fun projects» should be treated as «serious» ones or they can turn from «fun» to «funny».
Let’s take a look at the concept of «Fallen».

At first we had something like this:

Our hero, here he is.

How to fail a roguelike development (Guide from the Evil Wizard) #2

Hail to you!
It is me again, your best friend, the Evil Wizard!

I have second, very important advice for you:
never use any tools, algorithms or libraries!

There are a lot of them all over the Internet. Beware, the only purpose of their existence is to rob you! Steal your creativity progress.
Don't listen to weaklings, who say that using engines will save your time and will let you to start the gameplay itself.
Oh no, see through their intentions. They want to take a year of fun from you!

The only way to make roguelike is to write your own engine from scratch!
Because roguelike development is valuable itself and the final result isn't really important.


Your humble servant, the Evil Wizard.

How to fail a roguelike development (Guide from the Evil Wizard) #1

I have read enough articles how to succeed in roguelike development, how to create nice roguelike, but never heard about the dark side of the development.

The receipt of failure.

Of course, I don’t expect you to follow my «advises» and intentionally try to fail your project!

No and no! But maybe, just maybe, these articles could be helpful to my dear readers, the fellow roguelike developers and players!

So, my little boys and girls, you decide to fail a roguelike?

It requires some effort and dedication, but with the counsel of Evil Me, you will succeed to fail. Mu- ha-ha-ha.

Sorry..

My first admonish: never ask yourself about the purpose of the features, just add them!

You want to create great roguelike of all ages and all us know, rogueliks are about features.

A lot of them!

Foodclock? Never hurts! It served well in generations of the roguelikes! It would shine in yours!

Poisons and potions? Great stuff! Add them before you even planed your creatures.

Scrolls? Every roguelike has scrolls, add scroll as first item ever!

And so on..

I repeat again, the question: «why do we need it?» is stupid and disastrous!

Never question the features, simple add them to your game from the very beginning of the development.

Keep them coming and you’ll fail successfully!

Your humble servant, the Evil Wizard.

Coffee addiction and the lost week

I had counted the quantity of the coffee cups I had per day and decided to take a permanent break. ^_^
I have managed to overcome the alcohol drinking, no problem with coffee, I am sure.

Oh yeah, 27/05/14 I have started it and got damn hard withdrawal syndrome. 
Say hello to your addiction, buddy!

For the rest four-five days I felt tired, got headache and was nervous as obese virgin neckbeared fedora guy visiting the girls' campus. ^_^

All that trash had gone for good and I felt myself really cool and, as nice bonus, hate coffee smell.

Of course, all my attempts to work with Fallen code or documentary were in vain.
The good news, it has finished and I have already tested the thread's code.
There is work to be done, but I think, I'll finish it up to the end of the week.

Summary, this multithreaded pathfindig stuff is the major goal of current fix.
When I'll finish this, the rest would be mere walk in the park.

Future history of Fallen

It is the sketch part of “About Fallen” page. It would be edited, steamrolled and placed there.

I plan to make this blog real citadel of Fallen, until it would need personal site.
Don'd hesitate to point me something or ask question. It would be really helpful!

History of Fallen the Roguelike

Fallen was completely different game or better say games during its development.

I want to write here short story of this project.

Wish it would be interesting for everyone, who like roguelikes, roguelike development. Would be helpful to roguelike developer to avoid my mistakes and at least, but not the last, would help me to put everything together.

So.

The development of the project, that eventually morphed into Fallen had begun in very late 2008. Maybe 28-30 of November, maybe December. Frankly, it would be better to say, that I have started it in early 2009. Also, it doesn't mean, that it was in development for all this years. At least one year, 2011, I didn't even touched it.

From the very beginning I was the only developer of the game, full of plans and rather inexperienced for the project of that size. Both in programming and game design. I thought, that my previous vast experience of “hand-made” ^_^ board and small computer games would be more then enough.

Of course, I was wrong, but I'll write about it.

First of all, the design document wasn't a design document at all, it was mere “coll stuff” list. Like, we would have golems, labyrinths, robots, lot of items, materials, global map, realistic combat, poisons, factions, bodyparts, wounds, pain, craft, wood, demons, nuclear war, fruit trees and cookies.

Doubtlessly, it was a death march project.

The waves of understanding.

Wave of team

I think, it the most important one. That help me to endure others. I was doubtlessly lucky that GoodSir to join the team. Feel of friend's shoulder, brainstorming, support, art, teamwork etc.
As I wrote for many time, without team, Fallen would be one of many “died in defunct” roguelikes.

Wave of code

Programmist. You need at least one skilled programmist for your roguelike, no exceptions. Sounds rather obvious, isn't it?
Roguelikes looks like really easy program, until you try to make one. There are lot of cross linked data and you have to keep it running smoothly.
It could be you, member of your team, you found, hired, enslaved or mesmerised. But you need this person!
Reading McConnnell's books when you already have bulk of smelly Cobol-style code, could be rather painful. I knew lot of projects, that died on this stage and, it is really pity, would die.
Fall From Heaven the Roguelike (old name of Fallen) gone the same way. Except I was stubborn enough to revive it for many times.
I'll put myself together, overcome terrifying shame and post my old code or “the best” parts of it. Maybe, it would help you to avoid my mistakes. I wish it to be so!
You can learn programming or make roguelike, but not simultaneous.

Wave of game design

Writing a design document after a couple of years of active development is cool tradition of Russian gamedev (c).

My philosophy of game design is that you can create the greatest algorhythms -- but it's in vain if you don't have a REASON to have them.
For example, the Roguelike "Fall From Heaven" had a couple of relatively working versions. It had tons of features, lots of places to visit, monsters to fight, neat pixel art, and etc. There's one thing wrong with it, though -- it was unplayable. This overwhelming swamp of features ended up being boring and useless.
I asked myself a funny questions -- "Why is Fall From Heaven the Roguelike not fun? My previous games were hella fun, but they had 1/100 of Fall From Heaven's features!".
Answer beat me with ugly stick. Lot of features doesn't mean fun. Useless feature would take your work as any other, with one exception – it contributes nothing to aspect of gameplay.
It was the moment, when I armed with big rusty knife, started to cut feature, balancing and reworking the remaining one.

But. Poor project architecture stroke on this stage. It was so fragile and overburden, so 80% of my efforts was put to keep program running with new changes.

This can lead the project to couple of ends.

First, the grave one – the very end of the project. We have seen hundreds of them. To tell the truth, I was close to it.
And the second, put yourself together and move on, step by step:

The King has died, Hail to the King

Old project collapsed at the summer-autumn of 2013, under burden of its unsupportable code. Yes, it was mostly technical fail.
I put my best to refactor it, but.. well.. it didn't survived the operation. I took couple of units, nice algorithms and started Fallen Rebirth at autumn-winter of 2013.
It was Paradigm changing decision.

I was always saying: Don't rewrite your project from scratch and did it myself one day.

Frankly, is there any other way to progress? Learn rules and ideas your workspace has, form the paradigms and them move them on!

Want to be creative game-designer and invent something new? Learn existing rules at first, play great games, write down cool ideas, analyse them, don't hesitate to copy, study, be openminded and then be ready to move forward.

Fallen Rebirth.

It is young, but looks promising. It's design document has, maybe 1/50 of “wannabe features” of demised project, but it isn't an overweight monster on a death row.
It is already ten times more playable, then old, full of features game.
The time will show the results, but GoodSir and I will do everything that we can to make Fallen to rise.

FOV

Well. Next part of bla-bla-blah series.
Today I want to speak about Field of View aka FOV. Have you ever seen FOV on Fallen screenshots?
Right, It was on old ones of ex-Fall From Heaven the Roguelike, but I am speaking of new Fallen, we started in October 2013.

Nope. There isn't any sign of FOV there.
Do I plan to add it?
No, I don't.

I don't want to say, that FOV is outdated, like ASCII, no it is not.
But! This part of roguelike dogmata's is overrated.
Usual roguelike developer starts projects and there is minimal set of features, that should be there and one of them is FOV.

I think it is hastily and ill-advisedly decision.
First, it isn't easy to make well working FOV. There are lot of well done algorithms and precoded libraries, but, even then, it wouldn't be walk in the park.

The second problem, even the perfect FOV algorithm, codded by Donald Knuth himself would be resource consuming.
FOV is gready.

Frankly, everything I mention above isn't a problem at all.
Roguelike developers really love solve puzzles.
Making roguelike is for algorithm friendly boys and girls, right?

The main trouble, usually FOV added without answering question, what for?
It is added, because it should be.

Wait, wait! You can't just make FOV and let it be. You have neatly add to your gameplay.
It should be useful for  the gameplay, for the player and the most important - for fun!
Truly. This is the most important question: "Would it add fun to your game? Do you need it for fun?".
I was thinking a lot about it, the answer was: Gameplay of the Fallen needs FOV, like a fish needs a bicycle.
So, no FOV here.

One suitcase life.

Disclaimer:  This post isn't related to roguelike dev or Fallen, just my small idea, I want to share, so you are free to pass it. Especially for this, I cut my post in two. =)

One suitcase life.
Well, well, well. I didn't come to this due some super powerful meditation technique, it was just coincidence, that leads me to this conclusion.
Some time ago, I got few episodes, not one or two,  when I was moving from place to place with nearly all of my belongings.
Losing or leaving some of them in the process. At very end, I was moving with nearly one suitcase of belongings. It isn't small one, but only one. Only one big bag of items, that I can call my own, but hey! It was comfortable! Even without tons of stuff I thought to be higly important for even evrydays life.

All others, I bring to place I stay or live, that's something,that give some marginal comfort, but it sn't truly mine, even if it literally mine as lawful owner.
Franky, It frees. I can take my suitcase and go, leaving everything, what isn't mine behind.
One suitcase life saves lot of money and put comfort into life, when your suitcase stays between you and all this spontaneous spendings.
Do you really need this super flat big TV? It is out of suitcase, it isn't yours.
Who need this all fancy stuff, when it doesn't fit your suitcase?

I don't know, but maybe it will help you too. Gather your suitcase, safe your money and live easy! =)

Dungeon

What do I think about dungeon and dungeons for Fallen?
What type of dungeon I found interesting?

When I need to come to any sort of decision, that founds difficult to set up a goal, I usually use "negative" method.
It means, if I want to know what means the best dungeon, I have to find out, what do I think the worst dungeon.
So, lets think, what I don't want to see in Fallen dungeons.

a. Monsters is the only thing you meet there. That's wrong. Dungeons should have traps, treasures and puzzles. Some dungeons could be monsters free, but still active and interesting.
b. This room is all dungeon. Until we make some sort of tomb or house basement, dungeon should be big.
c. We assure you, exit is where you enter. You enter dungeon, explore, fight monster, collect bounties and treasures, evade traps and then leave it, where you entered the dungeon. There is no other option. I don't like.  There should be possibility to finde other dungeon, other place, town, hallway etc and find yourself in completely other place or leave where you entered. It is up to you. It shouldn't be 100% option, we can have simple dungeons, but they shouldn't be the majority of them.
d. Dungeon is dungeon, it is the law.  But why? If I want to have underground city or forest, or lake, or everything.
e. The deeper you go, the more dangerous it became. Okay, it sounds logical, but seriously, if it if dragons lair, it would be deadly  from the very beginning, and why goblins should put weakest members of there society near the entrance, maybe they should put there guard post?
 

Corridor Dragon

It is well renown combat style! It helps player to destroy waves and waves of monster!
You have found big vault? Group of goblins? Don't panic! Just rush into nearest corridor and kill them one by one! They wouldn't be able to reach you with missiles and summons!

The question is -- why most of roguelikes have one tile corridors between areas (rooms etc)?
Answer is simple! Remember size of classic console window, it is tiny for modern times.
Also, one level of dungeon = one screen.
If we make good corridors and halls, they would eat up all free space!
One tile corridors is obsolete way to create game. It gives possibility of nearly uncontrollable scamming (DCSS has smite spell, but it is not a skeleton key for corridor dragon style).

It was in the past or games based on old games, like DC, but why new games has it?
Okay, I can understand one tile doors, but don't think it is good for gameplay, but corridors? Why?
Well. Doubtlessly, it is of this "please die" old features of ancient times. =)

PS
And I don't say that one tile corridors don't have right to exist! In some special occasions, like small shaft or secret passage, they would be exactly on their place. Anything we want to show as really small and narrow, but not every corridor in the game.

ASCII

What do you think about ASCII.
Do Roguelike means ASCII?
You said yes, but why? Seriously. Just think about it.
Why ASCII means to be roguelike main feature?
Heh, it looks like I understand.

The same situation happens with other aspects of roguelikes and  nearly everything in life.
For example, lets say, that Roguelike development is religion.
We have the main idea, name it teaching. What make roguelike so addictive.
Make you to assault dungeons, fight monsters. That's why they eats up hours of your time and you don't regret it.
What is "Te@ching of Roguelike"?
It is procedural generation, jiggling all game world up side down.  
It is lot of random action in gameplay.
Depth and tons of simple details, fast gameplay, that takes hours to master.
You can see, they are really few.
This is roguelike.

But, there is other side of the coin, that doesn't make roguelike, but absurdly meant to do so!
The sacrament rituals of roguelike.
Some of them had settled here, because The Master Rogue did so.
Without understanding why this feature was there!
We can see a lot games, that has all roguelike "features", read game presents us heap of ridiculous  combinations of obsolete  rogdev traditions, dirty hacks in a uncontrollable boring mix. (I knew it, it was reason of Fallen1 downfall. =)  )

Lets check a couple of this rogue dev traps:
Food clock. You say -- "but roguelike have to have it!". Hey, hey! Why?
Because food clock exists in all Great Roguelikes of Old Times!
Okay, but some of them, like ADOM, would really win, if food clock would vanish from them or reworked greatly.
And for rogue or DCSS. Food clock is limitation, gameplay press, that makes player to move forward and not to grind.
And I think -- not the best one.
Food clock could be really annoying part of game play if you add it, just because every roguelike should have it.


Next, but not the last sacrament rituals is our topic, ASCII.
Ask anyone, what means Roguelike and one of 3-5 answers would be "this ugly ASCII".
But before trying to put me on pyre for heresy, ask youself -- why ASCII even came to roguelikes?
Answer is simple, it was the easiest possible way to create UI for indy game.
It would take minimal code/hours investments and reasonable quality for terminals of old times.
The joke is that right now, create console window simulation on modern computers as hard as create fully graphical interface.
But the second one is really more flexible and useful.
Right now, ASCII in roguelikes is sacrament tradition, that should die long ago, but still on board.

Why? Well. people love traditions and ritual, even if it put real idea aside.

Couple of nasty bugs have been cleared, halve dozen of issues fixed.
Debug interface now turned to something you will see in final game.
But the most important, we have big surprise for our future players!
I am not completely sure when I'll finish this, tomorrow or at weekend.

EDIT: Also, I implemented interesting, perk- based leveling system for creatures. It isn't something new, you can see in different games, but it really cool system!
For example, I don't juggle with stats of, for example, giant roach.
All creatures are the same from the start. I just gave it three perks.
Hard as nail (+ good hit points bonus per level), Carapace(armor per levl + static bonus), Clumsy (- to hit) and set it level to 3.
It make this beast rather interesting and dangerous for low level, badly equiped character.
Because it got about 30 hit points and 12 armor. At the good side, it has only 65% basic to hit chance!

---

Yes, my vacations is over and I have less spare time and the most important, brain power to work on Fallen.
Heh, I really love coding computer games.
I really feel anticipation for this, but I am not sure, that I can become full time indie roguelike developer.
Simply, because I have to eat and pay bills. This life is funny I have to spent 10-12 hours per day on something I really don't like, even hate from time to time, to have couple hours, dead tired on something I like.

From other hand it makes me so happy and I feel such an urge to work, every time I work on Fallen.
Well. It is critical difficult personal decision. Mostly finance, of course. Maybe I'll write something about it later.

step by step

Again, I have some sort of depressed state of mind and try to cheer up.

It happens sometimes. Coding Fallen is really fun and cool, but now everything damn boring. Maybe for couple of weeks now.

I know how to live throw it as quickly as possible.

Well, about Fallen development.

0.1  is nearly done, I don’t want to cheat you. It is literally new game, so it gone back to alpha stage now.

For example inventory totally ruined now and should be reworked, I am afraid recoded from scratch.

Hah, I was proud about inventory code once. Now I can’t look at it without hundred of facepalms. It is the price of progress, right.

I don’t know how long I would stay ruined, so I’ll put 0.1 to download section today without announcing it on roguebasin and so on. Some sort of release for close friends.

When I’ll back on tracks I’ll continue the fight.

EDIT:

Ohh. I forget, turned off generation of random groups on road hosts.

It means, that roaming animals, undead and rogues wouldn’t attack townspeople.

Of course, we would have it, but it would be organized and quest oriented.

It was really funny to see animas and undead fighting each other and hunting citizens  on the town streets, for the first few times, but it is completely game breaking.

For example, you can’t visit besieged town, because it flooded by mosters.

Happy New Year!

It has been more than a year since 0.0.9 release. Fall From Heaven the Roguelike release.

You can say: “what a hella u were doin, man? One year is more than enough to create new version!” and you would be right, but…

Lets see. Upon the final release I understand that FFHtR is unfunny. I wrote about it lot of times. Additional features didn’t made game more interesting, conversely it became incomprehensible. So on, so on, so on.

I was confused, didn’t work for some and I would cancel the development if there would be no FFHtR team. I was unfair to trash out work of other people.

It was sort of creative search. We were discussing, trying different things, stiles, and concepts.

Lot of code made and removed. Gameplay features tried, removed, changed etc

I think we defined the final concept, well, maybe February 2013.

So, we are working on Fallen for 6 moths maybe.

But one year without release, well, it death for alpha stage roguelike. I think it is for good, let the FFHtR rest in Peace and Fallen to take its place.

From this week, I’ll try to finish unfinished =) and will work steadily at one direction. For this week it would be interface.

OpenGL

Hey, boys and girls, by the way, did I wrote that we moved to OpenGL?

No? Well, well, well. Developing game is really cool idea, but leaving blog behind makes our follower, who is waiting for this game (is there anyone? =) ) think, that we forfeit development! NO and NO!

So, what I was speaking about? OpenGL? Yes, I managed to change DirectDraw to OpenGL at less then one week, and yes, I am really proud of it. =)

What does it mean? Crossplatform? Hmm, maybe, maybe!

Random Generators

It is funny, but manual creation of h​amlet of Hallowel (Hello, anybody remember that place?) took almost the same time as the creation of random generator routines for towns in current form.

Also, that hamlet was almost empty and boring, when towns are full of people, furniture and so on. Well, well, well. The most important, that separate modules of random generator now successfully used in other generators (caves, dens, houses, etc.).

Development Concept - game world created by bulk of small generators, that responsible for own small piece, works really great!

Restart

0.1 looks like total restart of our roguelike, and maybe it's for the best.
We even changed the name. =)

Actually, I propose to take look version 0.1 cut out plans. =)
Our new motto is: Feature Cut is the Best friend of game developer!

Let's look at list we would not have in future version:
No hunger. The old hunger system doesn't fit to the current game mechanics. Absolutely. Turning off in 0.1.
Quest. They will go to a separate release, with interesting mechanics, which GoodSir and I developing now.
Active followers. They are cool, but also at separate release.
Any other weapons, except axes and blunt. Each weapon will have its own characteristics and abilities. We will be adding 1-3 weapons per realise.
Magic, Ranged, and so on.
Craft of any sort.
Weather changing and the seasons.
No global events. Like demonic invasion and so on.



Of course It can't be called completely finished game.But, don't  forger that Fallen is realy new game, with the new paradigm of development.So, It can be quite accurately described by the version number 0.1.0.

Ohh... Boy and girls, if would say that I fall in love, it wouldn't real truth, because, I don't know, for sure, 100% sure.
But, it is god damn, too close!


wish me luck, please! I don't want to eat any more shit, but want us both be really happy!

PS
Don't afraid, it wouldn't hurt FFHtR development.

I have spent  three days off in a small house on the hill, near lake, we were drinking beer, feeding mosquitoes, life was simple and everybody was happy!

I have returned refreshed and full of new ideas and solutions for different issues!

I added GoodSir (nickname dude here), we work together on FFHtR, if didn't know as author to this blog (I didn't know, that it is possible, before ^_^).
I think, it would be interesting, so he would report his own development news, so it would help to avoid misinterpretation from me, reporting his work here.

Also, I have read this blog to understand what we have left and found, that I made some promises, like one nice man, we all know: ^_^

So, I'll update development page today, check all promises and post here some report: promise/ done.

FFHtR awaiting great changes. We would continue development of FFHtR, but It wouldn;t be limited by FFh setting, even we would change name of our roguelike. It doesn't mean that FFHtR and FFH universe would part ways, no, we wouldn't touch dark soul of FFH, but roguelike and strategy game has really different goals.
Do not afraid, nothing we have now would be removed, tossed a bit, maybe.