The real reson why development is slow.

 Sometimes a real gem of a roguelike comes along and it is too good to put down. First there was Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, and now there is another. Infra Arcana!

http://infraarcana.wikispaces.com

This game really rocks, although it is still in "early" development it really is quite playable and fun. I say "early" in quotes because it has not been around long, but Martin Tornqvist has already released 11 major releases and many more bug fixes. But even from the first release it had a finished feel to it and it has only got more polished.

It is a game set in the early 20th century based on the mythos of Lovecraft. Lovecraft always had a feeling of fear and exploration at the heart of his works. That is fear of the unknown and unknowable. This is where this game excells. At the heart it is a stock standard roguelike with hints of its heritage everywhere, but with combat weapons like axes as well as guns it has a more modern twist. Fans of DoomRL will love this one as will fantasy roguelikers I think. It has everything for everyone. A unique aspect is the "food clock", that is the clock that drives the player forward and deeper. This is in the form of a insanity counter. If the counter reaches 100% it is game over, however the counter is not a continual one, it only raises when your shock factor increases too much. This is where the game goes on its own path, where different rooms, creatures and other events can raise your shock value until your insanity increases, with its own unique effects. Dark rooms, grotesque statues, blindness etc all have differing effects on your sanity.

Also chuck in some dynamite, cool guns, molotov cocktails and flares and you have a really fun and cool game. Also as well as been in ascii there are some really cool graphics too. I give it 4 out of 5 flaming reanimated corpses.

Back home

Hell I'd rather be elsewhere but I am back from a one month holiday, cruising, skiing, driving, watching rugby and relaxing. Now I am back to reality, I will get back to programming soonish, as soon as I reclaim my laptop back. It is in the hands of someone else and it has all my unsaved code on it! Probably about time I backed it up, hopefully it wont be too late.

P.s New Zealand rulz, well the south island is sweet as bro, the north island is full of people!

"You know I can't eat your ghost chips, bro!" Hahahahahahahaha!!!

Off on a break.

Well progress was a bit slow this month, got a case of the flu, well ok not really but some virus anyway :) Dont you hate it when people always say the have the flu and a couple of days later they are better. Thats not influenza people!
Anyway I will be off on a holiday for 1 month (for october) and will not be taking a laptop along. I will be viewing the magnificent landscapes of middle-earth though, well Peter Jackson's version of it anyway. 

Cheers

Quick and dirty tiled space marines.

Just to let you know I am still alive. Lost a week to life but hopefully things will get on track next week.   I decided to spend an hour looking at adding Psiweapon's graphics to the game. Below are some quick in-game screen shots, the terrain tiles are just something I threw together.  The mutants/cultists are a single tile whereas the marines are constructed randomly with different body parts/equipment.  I think 7 different tiles construct the marines.

I have also "painted" the space marines armour, upon loading the images, to blue or grey (i have not touch the other parts, or attempted to colour to any specific chapter).  I think it works well, thanks for the body parts Psiweapon.

Above - a blue space marine wielding a plasma pistol and a single lightning claw (will be in pairs in the game), and a jump-pack. Also a grey space marine wielding a chainsword and pistol.

 

Heavy bolter time. Daka daka!

Sneak Peak Video - Bloody Fatalities (ASCII)

I have a nice present for you. I have uploaded a demo video of my weapon "fatalities". Please note that this is just a demo and does not represent the real game, blah, blah, blah. The action takes place in a generic cave setting where a few unarmed cultists were having a private get together when suddenly an uninvited Ultramarine shows up.

I have upped the fatality setting, but saying that this is probably more realistic result of what a chainsword would do to an unarmoured human.
Bolters have had their damage upped in this demo, I don’t need to say more lest I ruin the surprise.
Blood for the Blood God!

 In this demo the body parts you see are just generic, i.e. don’t expect the loss of a limb to slow the cultists down any. That will come later, this demo is really just about showing the various fatalities.

Things I will be doing next.

• Construct the spacemarines and cultists out of Psiweapons sprites and “Paint” them up.
• Find some terrain placeholder tiles. (e.g cave, overworld, ship, mine, city, ruins below city etc)
• Seed the name generator with chapter themed names.
• Add correct damage models for ranged weapons. E.g. bolters have explosive bolts and lasguns have searing beams of energy.
• Add a simple roguelike scenario (probably will just improve the cultist's cave for now)
• Finish the Arena scenario.
• Come up with a better name. What was it that Fenrir suggested? Conflictmallet 0x9C40

 All in time for the ARRP, thats still months away right? We will see.

P.s Sorry about the music, I *now* know that CamStudio records what you are listening to. I should of been playing the Dawn of War 2 soundtrack instead of Pete Murray :)

Lets build a Space Marine.

Well Mr Psiweapon has done it again. I have to say I am very impressed with his work. I don't really need to say much else. Lets build a Space Marine. At least I don't have to twist them out of the plastic, which he jokingly says he is tempted to draw as well. 

Check here to see more of his art.  If that does not inspire me nothing will.

Dark gothic...

So the real problem with a game such as this is doing justice to the setting. It is not enough to have a ass-kicking player that slays everything in its sight, it has to feel like you in the warhammer 40000 world.
WH40k has a dark gothic feel to it and it has blood and guts by the Rhino load.  SO first I will look at damage and death. Death should not just be a enemy dying, it has to feel right, chaos and xenos skum deserve no less. Weapons should be able to inflict gruesome damage and space marines should be able to rips heads off as they go along. So as gruesome as it indeed sounds, I will be implementing "fatality" moves to the game. At first they will be automatic, kind of like a critical hit, but only if the hit is close to killing the enemy.
Fatalities:

• Decapitation, and de-limbing.
• Blood spatter and blood spurts. (corpses that continue to spurt blood for a few turns)
• Bodies flung across rooms and smashing into walls and other bodies.
• Wieldable body parts (not that you would want to)
• Total corpse destruction, e.g. ash, goo etc.

Weapons will only be capable of certain fatalities, i.e a chainsword can remove a head, a powerfist can crush heads or fling bodies around and a flamer can turn bodies to ash.

This will be easy enough to do in ascii but in tiles it will provide problems. Oh well...

Its alive!

So here is a quick run down of the game. 

The game is obviously set in the 40k universe and the player (at this stage) will play a Space Marine. While I have many ideas running around in my head, as well as many suggestions, currently all I know is that you can choose a chapter (or possible create your own, more on that later), descend into a "dungeon" and kill filthy chaos worshippers, heretics, mutants and xenos scum.  

I have been asked, by a great pixel artist, if I could actually use a single space marine model and "paint" it in the game. Using various newbie techniques I managed to do this, by reading in the base model and repainting set colours to other colours.  An example on this is shown below, with simple coloured models. 

Note that this is my art, and done really quickly with MS Paint :).  I think the turned out well for the effort I put it, but they are just an example of how to change the colour of the model in game. The purple and green model is the base model. 

Disclaimer: These are not the models I will be using in my game.

First Post

Announcing my new roguelike game project. An unnamed rouguelike based on Game Workshops Warhammer 40000 universe.  More info to come...