7DRL Picks!

Posted on Sat March 17, 2012 | 8 Comments

I had a fun to program idea for a 7DRL but because of a busier than usual week at work I couldn’t quite find the time to put something together. Maybe next year.

There were quite a few good 7DRLs released this year! Here’s a few of my favorites:

The Adventurer’s Guild by Nolithius

You start with a party of four adventurers – each with their own unique skill. For each monster you kill you gain a certain amount of money based on their difficulty. At midnight you have to pay your party members – and if you can’t pay them, they take off, refusing to follow on. Make enough money though and they come back. I probably played this 7DRL the most and found it to be a lot of fun.

I seemed to lose Rayn, the javelin thrower, early in the game each time :(

I really liked that each party member has a special power (except Oslo, who is just extra tough). Here I’m using Kohn’s special ability to heal.

It’d be cool if he kept working on this a bit more, with extra abilities, the ability to revive or somehow acquire new adventurers, different items, no more deadends, etc. Overall, this is an extremely impressive 7DRL.

Sword in Hand: 7DRL by Jeff Hait

This is another very well put together 7DRL. Amazing what some people can do with only 7 days of work! In Sword in Hand, you wield the great “Freyblade” in an attempt to take over an opposing kingdom. There is a full ASCII castle that looks pretty nice to greet when you start the game and NPCs even have a bit of dialogue.

If you approach the throne you get a neat map of your territory vs. enemy territory and an option for a few quests.

You get several special attacks you can use that drain blood from the sword along the left hand side of the screen.

In a dungeon!

The only thing I had a hard time with in this one was figuring out how much HP my character had left. I’m not sure if it’s tied to the blood your sword has left or not. Maybe I just missed it completely. Otherwise, this is a great 7DRL.

Drakefire Chasm by Tanthie

You start the game as a simple wyrm and upon character creation you get to choose your first type of breath based attack.

You immediately enter a dungeon full of various enemies – bears, goblins, etc. I found that my initial melee attacks were pretty weak but my breath attack worked like a champ. It has a bit of a cool down period but can really help against tougher enemies.

I liked that you can eat the corpse of the enemies your wyrm has killed to regain a bit of health.

After you beat a level you get to level up. I really liked this concept and it fit really well with the ending goal becoming “the ultimate dragon”. I found this game to be kinda tough – especially the rock throwing monsters! I got fireball on my second level and was able to show them a thing or two after that though.

Give this one a shot for sure. Another impressive 7DRL!

Escape From The Vault by Max Breedon and Rusty.

The tileset in this is quite impressive. You can choose from a variety of classes and races to add a bit of a mix.

I hope to see some more work put in to this one, not that it’s already got a great start.

Nightfall by Numeron

Nightfall, first off, boasts a pretty impressive tileset. The premise of this one is that you have crash landed and nightfall is coming. You get a variety of items to help you out though!

The game has a bit of dialog here and there. And an intro!

The landscape changes to a cave theme shortly after your crash landing. Pretty sure I saw some trees from Zelda: Link to the Past before this :)

I made it quite a ways until the darkness got me. After that it was all over.

What’s impressive about this 7DRL is the amount of useful items it gives to the player. Another very impressive 7DRL!

Mujahid by Pat

Mujahid has a pretty cool concept in which you can only see in the direction you are facing. The enemies can only see in the direction they are facing as well though. I made the mistake of immediately attacking a knight my first game and died rather horribly in just a few hits before I reread the helpfile! This game is all about stealth and sneaking up on opponents, and it works great. You can throw off your opponents by throwing rocks and such to distract them, sneak up behind them, or avoid them completely by dodging their line of sight. You can also try and lose them in the “dungeon”!

I liked this one quite a bit as well. I especially liked the “stealth” concept.

Peeks and Pokes has a rather comprehensive list of the status of all 7DRLs. Check 7DRL.org for some dev blogs and other writeups.

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Libtcod 1.5.0 and the “@” key on German Keyboards

Posted on Sat February 18, 2012 | 1 Comment

Nachtfischer reported to me that on the most recent version (and probably all versions before that) of Stellar Edge the “@” did not work on German keyboards.

This key is pretty important as it shows your squad’s stats and allows you to change their inventory which will be far more important in coming versions when I introduce crafting, modifications to equipment, and the market in Space Stations.

The “@” key is pressed on German keyboards by using AltGr-Q and what’s strange is that SDL supposedly takes care of the conversion “@” on German/Other keyboards, but for some reason the key was only being registered as “q”.

The solution was to add this bit of Python code to detect “alt-q” as the “@” key.

if key_char == "@" or (key_char.upper() == "Q" and libtcod.console_is_key_pressed(libtcod.KEY_ALT)):

Special thanks to Jice at the Libtcod Forums and of course Nachtfischer who runs his own German language Roguelike & Gaming Blog for finding and testing this for me.

Download Stellar Edge 0.0.52a Alpha (Windows)
Download Stellar Edge 0.0.52a Alpha (Linux)

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Stellar Edge 0.0.52 Released

Posted on Wed February 15, 2012 | 7 Comments

Version 0.0.52 of Stellar Edge includes only a few new features with more coming soon. I should be able to spend quite a bit more time working on the game in the next few months.

I removed two skills (not that skills do a lot right now) – Bartering and Melee and replaced them with Explosives and Stealth. Stealth will help the overall squad odds while moving past monster eggs for now and will of course do a lot more when I move on to adding more AI and types to aliens/monsters.

I also added a help screen that is accessible at any time by pressing F1.

I made a number of improvements to the engine as well and fixed a ton of small bugs. It’s also set up now so that the monster you are targeting will be highlighted in red on the sidebar.

Also, monster eggs will finally hatch if you get close to them. As mentioned above stealth will help if you are close, but if they hatch you may find yourself quickly surrounded and dead.

A counter to this is the addition of explosives – for now an unlimited amount of grenades. They will be toned down in strength, variations will be added, and they will of course have to be bought or crafted in future versions.

To use one, hit “A” for activate on your keyboard

Press enter while the Grenade is selected and you’ll be able to select the crew member who will use the item

Press the space bar on the crew member you want to use the item and then enter. You’ll then be able to aim your throw with the arrow keys.

Note that when one squad member uses a grenade the other two can still take an additional shot (or use more grenades!) – the turn is not over until all squad members have made some type of move.

The game should be fully vi-key/netbook compatiable now. If you run in to issues please contact me or leave a comment below.

I’ve also started setting up a wiki but since the game is still very, very Alpha there isn’t much there.

Download Stellar Edge 0.0.52 Alpha (Windows)
Download Stellar Edge 0.0.52 Alpha (Linux)

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Alien Egg Hatching+ More Coming in 0.0.52

Posted on Sun February 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

Things have slowed down enough at work that I can start working on this in the evenings again in my spare time.  Hooray!  I left off at getting monsters to hatch – which I worked out tonight. I also made a ton of fixes to the engine that were needed.

As you can see, my squad is approaching a group of underground monster eggs (they are represented by the blue circles to the south). Based on the contained juveniles stats and the squad’s distance to the egg it may hatch. It hatching may in turn cause other eggs near it to hatch causing a bad situation to quickly get worse.


Here I’ve gotten a bit closer to them and they’ve hatched! Which brings up my next topic: Explosives. I’ll be adding bombs/gernades/plasma bombs/etc that you might want to use to clear one of these egg rooms out. The downside of doing that of course being that they often contain good minerals and items.

I’ve also fixed VI Key control on all Stellar Edge screens. I’ve always had a numpad so I didn’t really notice. It wasn’t working on the galaxy navigation screen. Ouch for netbook users.

I’ve also added Mantis BugTracking to Stellar Edge which can be located here: http://mantis.sat79.com. Sorry, you’ll have to register an account to add a suggestion/feature/bug/report. It should provide fairly accurate estimates for release dates and what I’m doing with the game.

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.htaccess Settings for CakePHP 1.3.x in a Subdirectory

Posted on Mon December 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

Sorry about the delays with Stellar Edge. I work for a major payroll company and things have been a bit hectic lately.

I had to install CakePHP in a subdirectory on my webhost recently and ran in to a strange problem in which the css/jquery files were not being found and were giving errors as if it was looking for a controller when browsing to them. An example error would be “CssController not found” being returned for http://www.example.com/appsubdir/css/styles.css.

The fix was to correct all three of the standard .htaccess files. In this example, assume my cakePHP app is located at http://www.example.com/appsubdir

So, my ./appsubdir .htaccess file is as follows:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteBase /appsubdir/
  RewriteRule ^$ app/webroot/ [L]
  RewriteRule (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

My .htaccess file in my /appsubdir/app is as follows:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteBase /appsubdir/
  RewriteRule ^$ webroot/ [L]
  RewriteRule (.*) webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

And finally, my .htaccess file for /appsubsir/app/webroot is:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteBase /appsubdir/
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /appsubdir/index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>

After I had that set it finally worked just fine. I couldn’t find anything on the web that fit my exact situation so hopefully this will save someone an hour or so of frustration.

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Android Progress

Posted on Mon December 12, 2011 | Leave a comment

I’ve made a little progress with Android over the past few weeks. I would have made more progress but it was interrupted by a major bender that hopefully will not repeat :/

What I’ve made so far is really nothing special at all and has no real value but it served it’s purpose in getting me used to the Android SDK, Eclipse, and Java. It’s just a simple “note” app that will save your software keys to your phone. It’s cumbersome to type these in via the Android keypad but hey, it works and the app being perfect wasn’t really what I was going for.

Screenshots!

Main menu:

This is a custom listview. It was a bit of pain figuring that out for the first time. I had to make a custom cursoradapter to get the windows/linux/macos icons to display properly. Once I figured that out, it was quite easy.

Adding a Software Key:

Pretty easy here. I just use my SQLite Data Provider to save what’s entered. Data is somewhat validated (software title must be filed out, etc.).

Editing a Software Key:

More easy stuff. It just updates the key.

There is more to it of course but it’s really not worth showing off. Like I said, this really has no “real world” value and it’s quite simple but the project served it’s purpose in getting me ready to make a real app. I have two or three in mind that I want to make so I guess I’ll get to work ;)

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Android Development

Posted on Thu November 10, 2011 | Leave a comment

I’ve had myself knee deep in Android Development for the past week or so. Ever since I got my HTC EVO on release day last year I’ve wanted to make something for it. I’ve made a lot of progress and my Python/LAMP background is helping out quite a bit. This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop work on Stellar Edge through! I’ve got a good 0.0.51 release coming before too long that will fix some nasty bugs and add some new content.

Here is the path I’m taking for learning Java / Android Development from scratch:

I hope to get through these in a month or two and start releasing simple Android demos here and there. I’ve got a pretty good idea for a Android Market app but doesn’t everyone? :)

I should start slowing down at work in January and heavy development of Stellar Edge should pick up quite a bit by then. Thanks for all the kind comments and constructive criticism I received from the 2011 AARP!

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Stellar Edge 0.0.50 Released

Posted on Sun September 18, 2011 | 11 Comments

On schedule for 2011 ARRP here is the 0.0.50 Alpha release for Stellar Edge. I added all the different planet type templates instead of just the ice planet template as had been available before.

Current Planets Types

  • Dead Planet
  • Toxic Planet
  • Blasted Planet
  • Tropical Planet
  • Desert Planet
  • Terran Planet
  • Crystalized Planet
  • Inferno Planet

    • Inferno planet screenshot:

    Note the lava. It doesn’t do anything but act as a blocking object for now.

    A crater on a blasted planet:

    The caves located on various planets take you to a planet themed cave. Note all caves are just the same old boring design for now – just different colors.

    This release is a bit lacking in content but it’s pretty much because I’m thinking about moving on to an Old West themed rougelike. There don’t seem to be any at all of those anyways. Making random events for all these damn planets and creatures would take forever anyways. We’ll see though. Enjoy!

    (List of Controls – No F1 key help implemented in the game!)

    Download Stellar Edge 0.0.50 Alpha (Windows)
    Download Stellar Edge 0.0.50 Alpha (Linux)

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    Posted in Screenshots, StellarEdge

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    ARRP Participation

    Posted on Tue August 23, 2011 | 2 Comments

    I’ll be participating in this years ARRP and my goal is to have a .50 release done. My goal is to have some new planet types done, morale, and a few other good things put in place. I’ve started using Perlin Noise to generate my planetary terrain and it’s working out pretty well.

    Also added Ice Volcanoes:

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    Stellar Edge 0.0.47 Released

    Posted on Sat August 6, 2011 | Leave a comment

    I ran in to a rather large and nasty memory leak about half way through this development cycle that was extremely difficult to track down. I tried and failed to use both PySizer and Heapy but neither supports Python 2.7 which is a bummer because Heapy would have been great to have for this.

    I wound up using Dowser after a bit of set up but it didn’t help much (probably not Dowsers fault here). I finally tracked it down and corrected it with minimal help from the standard GC Module.

    Regardless, sublevels (aka “Dungeons”) are now working fairly correctly. It’s still taking more memory than I’d like it to take when entering a new level but this is due to how the monsters are handled and will be corrected. The Ice Cave pictured below has Minerals, Gases, Eggs, and a pretty decent look to it.

    The monster eggs don’t quite do anything yet but in future versions I’m considering having them explode if a player gets close to them with some type of creature emerging. You might also need to pick one up for the completion of a quest and get it back to a lab before it hatches. There are quite a few possibilities here actually.

    I’ve also implemented player death with a bit of a twist. If your captain dies the crew member with the most experience will become the new captain and take command of the squad. The captain you create at the beginning of the game (a quick and easy process) could die while exploring one of the first planets but you could still win the game with a crew member who rises through the ranks. Once a crew member joins your squad you are free to customize them when they gain levels/stats/skills so I think this could actually be kind of fun. In the below screenshot you can see that a crewmember has died and the equipment they were carrying has been scattered about.

    I implmented getting and dropping items as well. Items can be picked up with the “,” key and dropped via the Inventory screen accessed by pressing “i”. I really like how Cataclysm handles getting multiple items so I might move more in to that direction at some point but for now if there are multiple items on the ground and you attempt to pick them up you’ll get a screen similar to this:

    I did quite a bit work to my rendering methods as well. Items will always appear over corpses, stairs will appear over everything except the player and monsters, etc. Basically I added a Z level to items for how important they are so that they can easily be seen by the player. I also fixed numerous other bugs that aren’t really worth mentioning.

    0.0.48 should have some more content. I need to work on the monster AI a bit more for sure. Enjoy!

    Download Stellar Edge 0.0.47 Alpha (Windows)
    Download Stellar Edge 0.0.47 Alpha (Linux)

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