7DRL 2014: Obumbrata et Velata

Prelude: 2014-03-07 21:50+0000

The title is chosen: Obumbrata et Velata.

The description has been set: "Vana salus."

Pre-existing code has been identified for use: a snapshot of the Victrix Abyssi source tree.

Initial development goals have been identified, but will not be mentioned until they are fulfilled.

Prelude continued: 2014-03-07 22:50+0000

Code points of interest (a note largely for my own consumption):

• ⌘ - U+2318 PLACE OF INTEREST
• ★ - U+2605 BLACK STAR
• ☆ - U+2606 WHITE STAR
• ☊ - U+260A ASCENDING NODE (caput draconis)
• ☋ - U+260B ASCENDING NODE (cauda draconis)
• ♨ - U+2668 HOT SPRINGS
• ✠ - U+2720 MALTESE CROSS

Status: 2014-03-10 18:05+0000

There's this marvellous phrase "repaying technical debt", which concept I first encountered in a post by one of the Dreamwidth devs.

Most of the coding I've done so far this week has fallen in that sphere. There's all sorts of terrible software engineering decisions in my roguelike codebase, and beating the damn thing into tolerable shape for further modification has consumed an awful lot of effort.

On the ?up? side, I've managed to spot some hideous bugs in Victrix Abyssi by doing this, so even if I fail to produce a worthwhile game this week I will be in a much stronger position to move Victrix Abyssi from the alpha phase towards the beta/RC phase.

Status: 2014-03-12 16:15+0000

Such refactor. Much lack-of-new-content. Wow.

Well, OK. Not quite that bad; I have added a few things, and set up the basis for adding others.

Character classes

I now have three character classes, with different starting inventories. Another couple of hours work should give them materially different gameplay, which will include:

• The Thanatophile will get abilities to smack down the undead.
• The Demon Hunter will get abilities to smack down demons, and be forbidden from using demonic equipment (hellglaives etc).
• The Princess will get heightened mobility in dresses, robes, and leather/dragonhide armours, allowing her to leap across one tile of environmental hazard as long as there's a clear tile for her to land in; she will also get more benefit from items like the "imperial seal" than the other classes.

Items

• Any item can now, in principle, be specified to grant a resistance or a damage amplifier trait, simply by adding the appropriate flags in the permobj entry. (The checking for such things needs to be implemented, though.)
• Any item can be specified to grant water-walking or flight.

Combos

Combos can now be detected by arbitrarily complex inspection of the current game state and the bare facts of the player's recent action.

Stylistic touches

The connection to the next "level" of the dungeon is now a magic portal, not a staircase.

Post-Mortem: 2014-03-15 14:52+0000

Well, I finished, and have a page for the game here.

I haven't updated the entry on the challenge page, because I forgot my password and the password-recovery system doesn't work.

Satisfaction level

Limited. The game lies to the player in ways not intended, and features that really should have made it in didn't. Also, balance/tuning issues dating all the way back to MPR7DRL are still present in some form, because never in all the time I've been working on this code base have I ever sat down with some user feedback and some

Lessons and Comments

• The Victrix Abyssi snapshot I grabbed had a somewhat unpleasant mixture of engineering issues and outright bugs; I've now resolved quite a few of those, but it chewed up ever such a lot of time in the process. Lesson: any code base that hasn't been the recent subject of efforts to improve its modifiability is hard to modify.
• Yes, Obumbrata et Velata supports saving. Comment: Your 7drl doesn't have to, and almost certainly shouldn't if you aren't working from a code base (or in a language) that gives you saving "for free".
• [more to follow sometime maybe later]