Fallen + sound = love!

Sound support, report!
Lock and loaded!

 Thanks to Andreas Stöckel and his great lib "Audorra", it took just couple of days to implement sounds into game.
Both music and sound matrix, with 5.1 support! Great library!
Of course, we will add more different stuff, but it is already really cool and atmospheric.
I took sounds from Civ4 and Alpha Centauri game.
It isn't good, if we speak about author rights etc, but until we don't plan to sell it and it is small roguelike project..
Well, I don't think anyone would bother at all.
When Fallen will grow up, we would have to change it, of course.

PS
Also, I want to remind, if you want to keep in touch and get day to day development notes, don't mind to check my twitter. I post there notes about development routines, bugs and fun.

Results of the playtest!

The results of the playtest are exceptionally satisfying!

Playtest showed a lot of flaws and major part of them were “I am too used to game to notice it”.

Yes, the worsen type of flaws.

For example, game screen moves abruptly.

I didn’t see it? Of course not, but used to it.

And so on.

I decided to start fixing issues from hardest to easiest.

Of course, it is 1000 times easier to add “qwe/asd/zxc” keyboard layout, then make multithreaded pathfinding calculation mechanism.

It meant, you can expect increase in speed of “greening” the issue as I move from hard to easy flaws.

Current task is already mentioned  - multithreaded pathfinding calculation mechanism;

Playtest? Playtest!

The result of the seven moths of work is here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jhp53zbnb89k3oo/Mini%20Fallen.rar
 http://www.fayloobmennik.net/3813337;
It is only the beginning, my fellow roguelikers!

EDIT: I'll update this post with found issues.

Embarrassing ToDo list:

Moved to Development page.

report 05/05/2014

You can purchases skill levels and abilities. It eat up a lot of time, but worth it!

Added full Screen mode that looks awesome.
Refactored map generator a bit. I put it aside, until the release of Mini Fallen.
Fixed dozen of bugs and glitches. Some of them were really funny. For example, static and dynamic (per level) HP bonus were replacing each other. Creature with +60 static HP bonus has mighty +60 per level HP bonus. O_O.
Added ranged attributes (Ranged Attack, Ranged Power and Ranged Speed) and ranged weapons.
Creatures use ranged weapon and attributes for ranged attacks or have "innate shooter" perk.
Player uses ranged attack via mouse.
Ranged attacks need balancing and polishing, of course.
Added accessories items and slot.

Monsters spawn is more interesting.
Good Sir made more cool art. Player tile, monster and some interface.

Artefact item type.
and few other small upgrades I forget. ^_^

Traveling is nearly to be done

Predictable. This is the word for all this 'pathfinding' routines.
Surprisingly predictable. Everything gone just the way I described in previous posts.

Inhabitants of Cold Halvic (about 40 NPC) gathered together and started their long-long trip to another settlement.
They successfully arrived to their destination. Of course, there were few glitches as I predicted, but predicted glitch isn't a problem a all.

So, I have to create 'ban direction precalculation' and 'add NPC to active zone' (because now, Player can see NPC appear and disappear from/to nowhere. That is fun to see during test, but not during the actual play).
Also, we get the nice bonus from this road map routines. You are to be able to click on the mini map or the global map and expect your character to go there on his own. Saving this destination and having 'beacons', just like in Dungeon Craw SS would be great! This automove and autoexplore features are my favourite in DCSS. Removes tons of micromanagement.

Yeah. I think, I can finish it today and move forward to finalizing the ranged weapons.
After this, I have to start, long awaited 'drag&drop' routines. They wouldn't do themselves!

PS
Also. I have to share another good news. Jesus05 the fellow and devoted roguelike developer joined our team.
It would be great to have him on board, because he is the guy I used to ask for advise for many times. 
He is a programmist. So, we set up a version control system and try to work together.
Of course, it would take a time to set it all up and he should read my supermegacode first, but, I think it would enhance the development.

07.02.2014

Abilities is on the move to finalization. This story is getting a bit old, but managing abilities would be main player activity. So, it should be done very well.
GoodSir sent me mockup of interface. I began implementing in to the game. Screenshot in a day or two.
My list of detected bugs and defects grows, it means I'll have a "defect fixing day" soon.

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.

Shoot them all!

I have finished technical shooting routines. There are few small problems, but it gone surprisingly smoothy!
 I was shoot down couple of times and seen NPC shooting each-other. Shooting is fully animated, of course (used my super madskillz).
For the next step, I have to add ranged attributes (used melee attributes for test), add shooting interface for player and ranged weapons themselves, but it wouldn't be very difficult.
All this would use already working algorithms.

Meanwhile, at first I want to spice up the "live world" simulation a bit. I have some secret plan for this.

Sorry, but all ideas about the simulation routines would be hidden. It wouldn't be funny, if you would know how it works.
I'll report results, but not how it had been done. ^_^

Peace and love, boys and girls! See you soon!

Paper work

Done tons of paper work. Revisied Fallen concent, plan and design.
Removed even more small features. Just pure gameplay for us.

What to show, heh. Put myself togeather to finish wall validation routines, so they look finished.
I think, I would have couple of screenshots of skill tree and system at the end of the week.
I can't promise, but will do my best.

a bit of surprise

Yes, we did it!
It isn't finished, tileset not fulfilled yet.
We would have new creatures, but...
Here it is, new interface, tiles layout, tileset and draw methods. Enjoy this small preview. =)
(All ASCII symbols would be replaced by graphical tiles. =)

Action!

I decided to separate blog posts about roguelike dev and  Fallen progress.

This one is about Fallen!
We are still working on surprise. There was enough premature decisions, so I want to keep it simple and interesting. This is my  law now.
Also, now I have a break from hidden stuff and pass the baton to GoodSir, so I can continued work on Actions!
I have finished interface, that allows you to see what do creature or your avatar doing right now.
Also, it show what effects and conditions affects creature.
The fun is, I keep it simple, I didn't add new structure that affects creatures. All this cool effects using turn action routines, like move and fight. It is flexible enough to have states like "fly from strong kick", "get a attribute gain/loss" and so on.
Right now I am coding wrapper then will provide with easy interface to work with low level "turn actions routines".
When I will finish, actions like "Horrible battle cry  -20 attack to every enemy for N turns", "bleeding strike - hp/turn", "Iron skin +2*level armor" or "bush fly in %direction%"  could be done with flying colors.

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.

Animation

Just this. Animation is on board now.

Interface work

Finished buying skills for skill slots, experience, exp for killing foes, level ups.

Then upgraded interface. Game will show context help when you move mouse over subject, like creature, item, button etc
Added automatic "on click" move, so you click o local map and chareacter moves there. 

Also, made basics for future animation. I can't imagine way we can make abilities without proper animation.

Plan: make alarm stop of auto move, when foes comes close to game screen.
Then return to skills.
I look forward for 4 skills right now. Axes, polearms, armor and explorer.
Also, game should respect creatures skills, ehen selecting them weapons and armor.

After that, I'll make generated word a bit more interesting.  I have plan for chests with treasures and money to collect.

Rogue Dungeon

Can help. but made classic rogue like dungeon generator in underworld.
Underworld waiting for procedurally generated content.
But! Now I am at Character development for 100%!

Skills, again.

Okay, I have passed skills interface.
Then, I expanded world under the soil and added one lair. It eats up about 250mb. =)

So, you would get your dungeons.
There would be big underground world, you can enter dungeon, find small path and enter big tunnels systems.
Find underground vault, that doesn't has access from surface, towns of antmen etc etc
Potentially, you can stay in Underworld as long as you want.
Wait, wait, wait. At the beginning, it would be just dungeons.

EDIT: Nearly forget. Next step, some basic character development. So, player would have some reason to move around.

Multithreaded

Moved world generation to another tread. So, loading graphics is the only problem that freezes game at start.

But when this graphics loading and processing became alone, it is no more that troubling at game start.
I have to optimize it. In future, of course.  But right now, program start doesn't look that frozen. =)
Also, Multithreading looks to be useful tool. I think, I'll use it fir different heavy calculations, like NPC pathfinding and so on.

Give fallen world a try

 Again, new test version for you, who want to try really early version Fallen Rebirth.

Whats new:
* Program clears spawn zones from global maps. I afraid there is small bug with multiple spawn zones on one global map claster,
* game clears killed creature, drops or destroy their items.
* game gives creatures items. Just basic generator, based on slots.
* creatures, that has herd mark would stay in a group, instead of been scattered along all map cluster.
* friendly/foe routines. There is no more friendly melee among NPC. =)
* NPC use specialized melee routines, instead of move routines. Also, creature use melee speed for close combat, instead of move speed. It means, we have slow monsters with fast attacks and visa versa.
* New rat picture.
* Enhanced pathfinding.
* Neutral creatures. Towns inhabitants for now. They would help you in combat.
* Populated global objects. Towns and Evil lairs.
* Pathfinding freeze bug fixed.
* Neutral creatures has their own routines in addition to aggressive combat.
+small changes, like i key for inventory.
Also, give a try to remove/ equip items on NPC. It is not a bug, I left it on purpose to test NPC equipment. It would be used for player followers.




http://rlgclub.ru/forum/download/file.php?id=2109

Gloal map got more details

* Items give stat bonuses.
* Founded object would be reviled on global map.
* Other global maps tweaks.