been a while since i've done something constructive on the programming front, but today i added special abilities for my sneaky blackguard class with hamstring and trip attacks implemented to add some variety to combat #roguelike #godot #indiedev

#roguelike #gamedev #godot

scraps of weird religious texts found on parchments and scrolls to trade to religious pilgrims in exchnage for something (???) #roguelike #godot #gamedev

made brandy to get drunk, made brandy flammable, made brandy throwable and splash into puddles of liquor, made lit torches ignite flammable substances when thrown, made fire spread to nearby puddles, made fire burn items and actors, and introduced about a million bugs #roguelike #godot #gamedev

working on blackguards: blowguns are new ranged weapons with charges that inflict poison condition on enemies. really trying to emphasise the sniping from darkness gameplay style #roguelike #godot #gamedev

containers like chests now generate with items, and i've linked item rarity to dungeon depth, with items in containers getting a rarity boost. all sounds great until you battle a bandit to loot their chest to find their life savings was two bones and two cudgels #roguelike #godot #gamedev

ascii vs graphics #godot #roguelike #gamedev

I spent so long searching for the right minimalist pixel art to work with but the answer was in front of me this whole time, it’s too late to go back now but part of me will forever yearn to make a game with this, no colours, no effects, only the most amateur of programmer animation

ascii mode #roguelike #godot #gamedev

here is the arcanist's infuse gem ability. You infuse a gem with a fire spirit which makes it explode on being picked up and then leave it around to kill unsuspecting innocents. I'm pretty happy that the item, ability and AI systems all come together nicely on this one #roguelike #godot #gamedev

it's a bit hard to work out from this but the dude with the staff is a healer who doesnt fight but goes around casting 'nine herbs charm' and injured friends, a charm that gradually heals over time. This was a bit complicated with an all new ai but works well now #roguelike #godot #gamedev

I made my first arcanist class power, which is basically my magic system but with the spells being more subtle than simply dealing damage directly. This one is offering food and wine to summon a slyph to follow you around as light source #roguelike #gamedev #godot

testing out the confirm prompts for attacking allies on Olaf the Bald and all looks good. Here you can see poor Olaf going hostile and then friendly again and being offered terms before being finished off. The health bars are now coloured to show allied/friendly/enemy #roguelike #godot #gamedev

the unsexy work of giving every entity a unique ID and working on properly serialising every piece of data means that complex AI states are now properly saved and allies now share knowledge of who has annoyed them between each other, as depicted below #roguelike #godot #gamedev

The Steam page for my game Chronicles is now live! Please consider adding it to your wishlist so that I have another number that I can watch increase! Please repost this! share with your friends! Thank you for following my work! store.steampowered.com/app/3919080/... #gamedev #solodev #gaming

it is hard to show action from a turn based game but i did 'offer terms' ability so you can show mercy to your bandit bros and chill around the campfire after a tough battle. using this is going to be a gallant class feature ability for goofy chivalry conduct rules #roguelike #godot #gamedev

not sure if a feature or a bug, but I decided to earnestly play my game to see how far I could get and I was cruising until I got one-shotted out of nowhere by a goblin with a two-handed sword who critically hit me and then rolled exceptionally for damage #roguelike #godot #gamedev

working on dungeon layout with specific themed rooms with appropriate fixtures and npc generation. It seems to be going ok and this is meant to be a bandit camp with a few beds and a small chest #roguelike #godot #gamedev

playing with torches and lighting. when you equip a torch, you light it and it retains that effect when you drop it but gets put out when picked up and put into your pack. this lets the player do tricky things like light up an area with torches on the ground for combat #roguelike #godot #gamedev

flame cloud effect - this will be the environmental effect that is used for burning objects, gases, actors, etc #roguelike #godot #gamedev

I got webs, which seems easy I know but I had to write a heap of code to make environmental effects impose passive effects on actors. Next I want flame clouds to burn actors, then make webs burn, then make spiders spawn in a web house #roguelike #godot #gamedev

mud fight with a skeleton #roguelike #godot #gamedev

throwable mud as a way for goblins to initiate combat, blinding their opponents with a mud pie to the face to reduce their perception, I think I am well on the way to writing the most annoying enemies possible

I thought the whole time that I mostly wanted just human enemies in this game but it was starting to feel a bit samey so I added goblins and the creatively titled goblin mobs that can spawn: goblin, goblins, more_goblins, and goblin_horde #roguelike #godot #indiedev

I just realised that when I gave undead the lowest possible perception score, I also made them effectively blind in the dark. Not very scary when skeletons just stand still in dark rooms doing nothing while you bash them to bits

this is the start of some of my more complex gameplay ideas now that combat is feeling fairly settled. i need to implement altars and shrines to various saints and more weird and unusual spirits and the offer terms ability was always a planned part of the chivalry system #roguelike #godot #indiedev

ive been a bit absent but I’m still working away on recreant. it’s all fiddly stuff behind the scenes but pretty important - xp and character levels, stat increases on every 2nd level, different feats for classes #roguelike #godot #indiedev

that purple guy is my end-game boss. now that I've added a goal, someone generous might even call this thing a game at this stage. Llofrudd should be almost invincible, but I have no doubt that the roguelike community can figure out a way to kill him #indiedev #gamedev #roguelike

ive been working on spawning npc's as mobs with a bit of logic about them and then generating appropriate mobs for the dungeon level, and i think im getting dangerously close to a playable "game". If you want to test play, here's the link: patjw.itch.io/recreant?sec... #roguelike #indiedev #gamedev

mobs generate more cohesively now and there isn't an initial battle royale as enemies spawn side-by-side. First step towards more intelligent dungeon design, because I'll be able to build encounters by difficulty soon and increase the challenge as you go deeper #roguelike #godot #indiedev

added food rations, which was a little bit tricky to give them different food sprites but to also stack them in inventory. This wasn't to add a food clock, but instead food restores a stamina point. I also added a satiation condition which prevents you from eating two foods in a row #roguelike

I'm trying to work out ways to make the intangible skills more relevant. Perception adds a bonus to critical hits, and I've made it so that it now adds to view radius so they can see better in the dark. It also makes wineskins more interesting because they add courage but minus perception #roguelike

luring friendly NPC to his doom through a trail of coins, i'm not too sure why he didn't go for the closest coins first but maybe the fact that he's stuck in a dungeon in the first place means he's not the sharpest tool in the shed #roguelike #gamedev #indiedev

im going to make coins and gems throwable so that, combined with the greedy ai behaviour tree, the optimal character build is a rich coward who hansel and gretals his opponents into a room full of undead and then loots their corpses #roguelike

programming thrown items really was not one of the most enjoyable experiences, from making the code for using items recognise thrown items, hacking together a targeting system, telling the combat system to use a different weapon than the one wielded, and then dropping the item in another place

smaller but more frequent special vaults. Here's a couple of levels being autoplayed to show how it looks #roguelike #indiedev #gamedev

I think my last upload had some issues with being at 2x zoom along with some annoying bugs so here's an updated web build whcih i pray works adequately patjw.itch.io/recreant?sec... #roguelike #indiedev #gamedev

tweaked the dungeon generator to include "big rooms". maximum of one per level and often not one at all but the idea is to create big structures to branch off in different ways and to also add complexity to the use of light, darkness, and ranged combat by creating space #roguelike #indiedev #gamedev

patjw.itch.io/recreant?sec... sneaky dev build. Expect rough edges and incomplete features, but it’s pretty playable. Because it’s web, saving and loading games and levels doesn’t work, so ignore that! Also, pick merc and confessor as class because the others aren’t done yet! #roguelike #gamedev

holy symbols are now holy periapts, a relic that charges up from inflicting pain on others. The more charges, the greater the light radius, capping out at 3, and charges allow for the user to heal themselves. The confessor starts with this item as a central class feature #roguelike #godot #indiedev

turns out skeletons can have blood too #godot #indiedev #roguelike

pretty close to a incomplete but playable release. i did behaviour trees for ai for the last week and it's working better than i could have hoped with npc's equipping items they find, drinking wine before combat for courage, fleeing when low on health based on morale, etc #roguelike #godot #indiedev

here's my fleeing AI. It's all a bit nonsensical and ineffective as a means of getting away, but I guess that's consistent with being gripped by terror with some arsehole with a cudgel pursuing you in the dark #roguelike #godot #indiedev

working on AI: # If prefer melee and hostile is at range # - check if prefer melee - special tag, or finesse bonus <= might bonus # - check if has wine # - consume wine

I did a behavioour tree AI and finally stopped fudging the monster visibility testing and now I've got NPC in-fighting. This is the player luring a hapless wretch and pilgrim to be killed by a deserter and an outlaw #roguelike #godot #indiedev

also, I made my code available: github.com/patjw/recreant. I'm still not sure if this game will be free or alternatively very cheap but I can't see a mad rush to plagarise my code in any event to prohibit me from making $2 in 18 months time

I am entering my edible dungeon flora stage, you can officially eat lunae moss for a healthy underground glow and now I need to think about other weird effects that give to fungii et al

lumincescent moss which you can pick up as an alternative to torches, altho I gotta make it so you can eat it for illumination effect, and I also did targeting system for examining things and a flavour text for the poor player character #godot #roguelike #indiedev #gamedev

I can not pixel art but here are my skeletons, next I am going to do all the sprites so they can hold weapons and they'll be my basic nameless enemy. I sincerely believe that you can not have an rpg without a skeleton archer #godot #roguelike #indiedev

holy symbols make light and you can now wear them on your neck so you have two free hands for wielding and carrying #godot #roguelike #indiedev