“What,” you may ask, “makes this an RPG tower defense game?” It’s true that there are a lot of fantasy-themed defense games that say ‘rpg’ styled on them, but Heroes of Greentangle will feature multiple dungeons on an overmap that you can navigate, persistent ‘heroes’ that serve as your towers and can level up, and gold/experience that can make both you and your men-at-arms more powerful.

Stay tuned!

The tutorial map screen for The Heroes of Greentangle. You are the wizard in the bottom right.

Stay tuned! I believe the game will be alpha-level playable by next week.

An image of the game without multiple character sprites (only hero and 1 enemy) or the 'fog of war'.

I understand that I could simply go and change my map tiles to contain image information, but that wouldn’t account for new doors or corridors that it generates, etc. Plus, I think it would be a lot more trouble in the long run than teaching the program to determine sprite image for itself.

After spending today goofing around in GIMP, I have started serious thinking about drawing some very retro art, instead. I don’t have the skills to produce really high-quality stuff, but what do you think about this? It might be a little bit more fun, right?

Note: All graphics are drawn and owned by me. Also, this is just a mock up, made by combining elements of my sprite sheet in GIMP. The game's tile engine is not actually implemented yet.

Here is the code for melee:

Here is the code for melee combat in Space Mercs

An entity calls this method whenever it tries to move into a square occupied by an entity of another team (the teams are currently only Players and Mobs). Initially I was going to have multiple enemy factions that would battle with each other, but I found that monsters would end up killing each other if the PCs waited long enough. Believable, but not fun. Unless I can figure out a way around that, it’s out for now.

Melee combat. Notice misses and damage at the bottom.

Because of the real-time nature of combat in Space Mercs, I had to make sure that missing in melee is implemented in the game, although I was originally planning on having no-miss combat. Without it, the game runs simply too dangerously.

A new 15x15 map tile with some holes punched in it.

Here is an example of what I mean. This map tile is really just a few rooms and a connecting (albeit not perfectly straight) corridor that lies between them. When taken into consideration with the rest of the map, however, we can see how the room in the lower left, which might otherwise be taken as an out-of-the-way corner of the map, becomes a dangerous thoroughfare with a doorless hole in its south side, allowing enemies passing by to see into your hiding place. The north-western room, however, was generated with a door in its west wall, providing blocking cover and making the room much safer.

By combining even a relatively small tile set, the way my generator creates connections means that no two maps will ever be the same. Even the strategic and tactical significance of a particular tile can change depending on how and where it is connected to the rest of the map!

On the left, you can see the walking-around-screen. On the right is the screen when you enter battle.

There has been some talk lately about the difference between strategic and tactical gameplay, and how the newer DnD games have been shifting toward a focus on tactics (round-to-round decision makings) rather than strategy (choosing when and where to fight, rather than how). The Dark Spire is a game that perfectly recreates the strategic nature of classic DnD and other crawls due to the purely deadly nature of combat in the game.

Newly created characters have between 1 and 8 hit points, depending on class. Each time you level up, all hit dice are rerolled. This means that a sixth level warrior will usually have somewhere between 28 and 38 hit points, with outliers on both sides. Enemies deal from 1-6 points of damage on a strike, meaning that your first level characters will die from a single unlucky hit. Your warriors are stronger, but not by much. Choosing the balance between fighting for experience and gold and avoiding combat is the challenge that anchors the game.

The game features an automap, but unlike the map in the Odyssey series, your own position does not appear on the map. This isn’t an issue while you are exploring new territory, since you can measure your progress by the map as it is revealed, but it does mean that the narrow corridors can become a maze if you are retracing your steps. Fortunately, the mage class has an ability to find your own position, but are you willing to expend a spell-slot to find your way?

My one gripe with the game is that its difficulty comes from the obscure nature of the game. Weapons do not indicate their damage potential. Skills are not always explicit about their own use. Although the level up system is understandable to a veteran of DnD, a player who has not played 0e and 1e DnD would be entirely in the dark about the way the game works under the hood at all (it even uses descending AC!). At the same time, its combat is nearly as punishing as Etrian Odyssey‘s, but it permits you to save any time, rather than just in town, as Etrian Odyssey does. I think that the nod here goes to Odyssey, but The Dark Spire has enough charm to win over fans nonetheless.

Plus, it includes a “retro” mode that almost perfectly recreates the look of games like Wizardry!

On the right is Dark Spire in "retro" mode! Yes, this is a modern DS game!

Space Mercs is currently working up to toe the line between tactics and strategy, with items that can contribute to both aspects of proper gameplay. Thumper beacons, for example, will allow you to choose the location of a battle so that it occurs in a long, narrow corridor that will allow your guns to go to work against fast, melee-range xenos.

My next project, which I am plotting but not yet working on, will much more closely hew to the strategic nature of old-school role playing. I am not ready to announce any more information about it yet, but I am very excited by the possibilities it will present to me both as a game maker and a player.

Stay tuned for information on Etrian Odyssey, hopefully coming sometime this week!

The thumper beacon, a primary tactical tool in Space Mercs, has been (roughly) implemented

(Note: the beacon is the silver-grey ‘:’ two squares north of the player’s ‘@’.)

The thumper beacon is now working in Space Mercs. Success at Mercs is heavily dependent upon tactical, cautious play, and players will find that use of strategic tools such as the beacon will be essential to success. In the picture above, you can see how the thumper draws wandering monsters toward its location, allowing you to plan ambushes or buy time for a strategic “advance to the rear” (retreat).

What was difficult was finding the balance of how strongly beacons like the thumper and several others would influence unit AI. I think that the effect is currently well-balanced, but it will take a bit more work before I can say that conclusively.

The splash intro screen to Wasteland

Interplay‘s Wasteland has been mentioned on this blog before as a reference that I use when considering which game concepts will be brought forward into the large RPG project I am planning to tackle after the Space Mercs roguelike has been completed. This post will be a brief overview of the things that I like about the game and want to bring forward.

The overland map for Wasteland

The idea of an overland, go-anywhere map seems to have really hit its stride with Wasteland. Like in its spiritual successor, Fallout, the player is not artificially limited to a small section of the country at the beginning of the game. The only thing stopping you from testing the very boundaries of the irradiated, post-WWIII southwest is an infinite army of grump, leather-clad muties.

This sensation of freedom was also present in the Elder Scrolls games, at least until Oblivion was released. With the fourth addition to the series, the developers went a little insane and decided to level the opponents to your character, essentially committing the gravest crime of good, fair game design–you would never meet a challenge too tough, and would never outgrow a challenge, either. A wolf at level one is challenging, but not deadly. That same wolf is just as challenging when you are level 5. It is the most grievous example of DM-ly handholding visible in most modern RPGs, and it will not be repeated in my RPG.

The shop

Shopping and NPC interaction in Wasteland is simple and fairly dense. It is difficult to figure out how to speak with an NPC, how to trade items between your party members, and how to manipulate your own equipment. The game features an admirable level of depth and sophistication, but it is hidden behind an overly complicated control scheme and a lack of clearly laid out buttons.

Simplicity of input aids depth of interaction, which is a concept that I am already exploring in the inventory and tactical combative aspects of Space Mercs.

Fighting in Wasteland

Finally, combat. Wasteland featured a text- and menu-driven combat scheme that evokes other games from the developer, such as Bard’s Tale. When looking at it from a game designer’s perspective, it is excellent–it features distance, multiple enemies, and dangerous combat that makes a player really consider his next move, lest he die. I want to bring all of these things into both Space Mercs and my RPG project. I will, however, be doing so in a manner more fitting with modern, spatial conceptions of gaming.

I would love to make a really classic-style RPG one day, but I think that my time right now is better spent learning from the ideas of games like Wasteland and then figuring out what made those games great, so I can bring them into the modern era.

Games like these were made by teams of 2 or 3 men (sometimes more, but nothing like the scores-strong development teams of today). That they could do so with nothing more than the primitive programming languages of the past and veritable oodles of chutzpah gives me hope that my own projects will stand a chance, if I am willing to put in the blood, sweat, and tears that a project like one of these would require.

Keep checking back!