Dead Night Forest 2: The Lost Caravan
Story:The caravan which was due is late and the forest is full of rogues. Recover gold and supplies by force of arms.
Instructions:
WASD to move (you can change keys on the Input tab of the splash screen)
Press left mouse button to pull back sword, hold to charge it up power, release to swing.
Control Mode A (recommended): Move the mouse up, down, left, or right and then press left mouse to set the direction of the attack.
Control Mode B: WASD movement keys also set attack direction. Tap the direction you want to attack, then press left mouse button.
Control Mode C: Left mouse button for horizontal attacks, Right mouse button for vertical attacks, hold shift to toggle left/right or up/down.
Charging up power increased damage and allows you to break an enemy's guard (in v1.1 and lower this works only with downward attacks). You can launch an enemy into the air by charging an upward attack.
Right click (Or G key) uses items. Only one potion can be active at a time. Duplicates will be converted to gold, eating food at full health also converts to gold. Potion effects remain active until another potion is used.
Space jumps.
Tab and Escape pause the game.
In v1.2 and later you can set Mouse sensitivity in the pause menu. You can also change to an alternate scheme for determining the direction of your attack, using the movement keys instead.
Your XP will increase each time you hit, kill an enemy, or clear an area. Your XP will decrease when you are hit, or when you are unlucky. Enemies become stronger at higher XP levels, but you will get more gold from all gold bearing activities.
There are two game modes, Normal and Hunger. In Hunger mode, you will lose a bit of health every 10 seconds.
There is no saving mid-game (each games should be short anyways), only the highest gold total and level reached is saved.
Potion Effects:
+/- max HP: Increases/decreases maximum hitpoints of the character.
+/- healing: Increases/decreases amount of hitpoints recovered when eating food.
+/- damage: Increases/decreases amount of damage inflicted by your attacks.
+/- charge: Increases/decreases rate at which power increases while the attack button is held down.
+ score: Increases amount of gold received from gold bearing activities (picking up coins, eating unneeded food, drinking a potion you are under the effects of already).
cleansing potion: cleanses all potion effects.
Change Log:
v1.44 uploaded Sunday, May 20th, 2012
demons can be dizzied by hitting them a bunch
demon death and bleeding effects added
lowered all enemies health by apx 50%
v1.43 uploaded Friday, April 13th, 2012
fixed an item pickup exploit
turned on shadows... wow what a difference they make.
animated a new doggy walk cycle
improvements to rogue and shield brute models
v1.42 uploaded Sunday, April 8th, 2012
switched to toon shader, fits much better with the style of modelling I'm using (read: extreme beginner).
v1.41 uploaded Sunday, April 8th, 2012
new ambient sounds
v1.4 uploaded Sunday, April 1st, 2012
2 new monsters added to game
2 new map tiles added to map generation
v1.3 uploaded Friday, March 30th, 2012
rogue and brute enemies now have a dizzy animation
killing an enemy yields a bounty
added keys; treasure chests must be opened by keys
the exit is now a magic gate which opens when enough enemies are slain (pause to see how many you need)
using the exit heals and advances player level
some new sounds
rogue and brute enemies have a headgear
added a potion that cleans off current potion effects
v1.2 uploaded Sunday, March 25th, 2012
added mouse attack and mouse sensitivity options
enemies now return to home position and heal when kited too far
added a dash attack to rogue enemy type
enemy aggro distance lowered
player light radius increased
added gameplay tips to the pause screen
guard break now possible on any attack direction
modified power display to show percentage
modified sword controls to make timing feel more responsive
added treasure chests, currently they are all unlocked
slightly lowered amount of power needed to guard break rogues and brutes
v1.1 uploaded Sunday March 18th, 2012
fix for Alt-tab mouse focus issues.
This game was originally an entry in the 7DRL 2012 Challenge
Start time: Sunday March 11th, 2:00pm, PDT.
End time: Sunday March 18th, 2:00pm PDT.
7 Day Roguelike Challenge Post-Mortem
What went right:
1. Unity
It's well documented and when I had questions, a quick Google search (eg. "unity 3d how do I obtain a random rotation around the y axis") would turn up what I needed. This is the 5th project I've made in Unity in the past 4 months, so I was up to speed and needed very little lead time to practice.
2. Simple art style
I stuck to the simple art style that I adopted in Dead Night Forest 1 and just didn't worry about it. And the enemy's beady eyes make me want to hack and slash them all that much more.
3. Got the combat system working fairly early
I really love roguelikes and have for many years, but these days I really want something more twitch based, but not a mash fest like Elder Scrolls has become. That was one of the goals of this project and I feel I accomplished much. It's a nice proof of concept that the system I had in my head would work in practice. I can take what I've learned here and start work on my Skyrim-killer roguelike fps hybrid in earnest.
What went wrong:
1. It's barely a roguelike
A pretty major factor in a roguelike dev challenge. While I created a playable game after 7 days, what I've created is barely a roguelike. It has procedural levels, and a basic item ID system, permadeath, and that's about it. The hunger mode gives you a real-time hunger clock, but it's optional. One major flaw is the lack of resource management, aside from health. Another is that there's no tactical advantages presented in the layout of the map. The last I feel would be interesting, game changing items. The potion effects were meant to change up the way one approaches each battle, but that really didn't come across that well.
2. Not enough enemy types, enemy attack types, and
Encounters feel too bland. Each enemy has only one attack. With only two enemy types that means there are only two types of attacks to learn how to avoid or counter. Which leads to...
3. Enemies are too easily kited to death.
A major thing that I overlooked was simply kiting enemies and attacking. I knew in early testing that the problem was there, just slash, back up and wait for the enemy to approach, slash again. This is a 100% way to beat every enemy. The AI will fall for it every time, and it totally eliminates all the depth of countering and guard breaking that I worked on adding.
Summary
All in all, it was a fun week, and a great learning experience. I got a ton of practice modeling and animating in Blender, and really pushed the boundaries of my knowledge of Unity game development. I ended with a playable game, that despite the game breaking bug (#3 above), I find quite fun to play. also the sound effects I created for eating and drinking make me giggle.
Goal of Project:
Create a first person perspective, melee-centric, real-time roguelike.
High value factors:
* Fun moment to moment melee combat - Like, God Hand meets Demon's Souls meets Mount and Blade. But playable on the PC with a mouse and keyboard (...and gamepad! Thanks, Unity!). Attack types will be determined as in Mount and Blade, last direction the mouse moved. Combos, Juggling, and Guard breaks will be involved. Character cannot guard, only dodge.
* Interesting encounters - I'll need a few distinct enemy types to pull this off. I'm thinking at least two human/humanoids and two monsters.
* Simple items and no inventory - Right click to use a nearby item. You can't take them with you, so the useless stuff is converted to score.
* Arcade feel - fast to get in and play. Hack and slash. Adaptive difficulty instead of experience level, again as in God Hand.
* Items -
. Potions - Simple to model and color a flask, will support simple version of ID game.
. Food - Health restoration. Need at least a few strengths of these.
. Coins - Score bonus!
. Lucky? Clover - random chance to give XP plus or minus.
Extra Credit Ideas (if there is extra time There wasn't):
* More Items -
. Upgraded weapon - just a simple plus to damage. Maybe a time limited flame sword?
. Armor - Simplest method would be a health boost over your normal health maximum. Another way could be time limited damage reduction.
. Bombs - if there's time I'd like some cracked walls that can access secret rooms by something analogous to bombs as in LoZ edit: Not gonna happen!
* Hidden Treasure - Walk into a triggered area to reveal a treasure box. Maybe you have to break it open.
* Inter-level Shop - Trade score for items.
7drl Dev Log:
Sunday, March 11th, 11:15pm:
9 hours in. I have a single weapon, a sword, with 4 attack types implemented. Controls like Mount & Blade, where the last direction of mouse movement determines the type of attack. Unlike M&B my intention is to go more brawler with this, so left/right attacks are fast combos, up attack will be a juggle, and down attack will be a guard break. Physics on the blade is implemented, as well as a first pass (possibly final, ha!) at blood particles on collision with an enemy. Also have directional dodge-dash on double tap of movement axis. I've built a very simple person model and rigged it up in blender. Tomorrow I'll animate hit reacts, guarding pose, walk, and an attack or two.
Monday, March 12th 11:10pm:
This may have been too ambitious! Only got 3 hours work in tonight. I have a dual wielding dagger enemy type in the game, but with no AI. He also still needs walk and guard anims. Redid the way collisions with the player weapon work, as well as the blood effect (now it's final).
Tuesday, March 13th 11:40pm:
What have I got myself in to? 4 more hours of work in tonight. Hooked up juggling and launching, hold an upward attack for a brief moment to power it up, release and the enemy pops into the air. Connect with a downward slash while the enemy is still in the juggle state to launch it backwards. Do regular left/right slashes to keep them in juggle for a little bit longer. Regular hit reactions are also in. Tomorrow I think I will take a break from combat and work on the dungeon gen, as I've not really done procedural geometry in Unity 3d yet at all...
Wednesday, March 14th 10:30pm:
Stayed home sick. Got some work done in between fevered naps. If nothing else the combat is almost finished. Here's a video: http://youtu.be/aRyufpSJWQY.
Thursday, March 15th 11:35pm:
Spent the evening figuring out how to do simple maze generation in Unity. Not fully implemented yet, but should be by tomorrow night.
Friday, March 16th:
Worked from 6pm til 5am Saturday! Level generation, potion modeled, coins modeled, lucky clover modeled. Various under the hood infrastructure to support items. Guard break particles.
Saturday, March 17th:
Woke up at noon. Potions scripted, exp/level system implemented.
Sunday, March 18th:
Success! Added a 2nd enemy type, high scores, and all that jazz.
