New art and bug fixes

Had a fairly busy month with other things, and generally been pretty slack, so not so much to show.
I have implemented new graphics and animations for the character, and added some particle effects to show what colour key a door needs, as can be seen in the screenshots below. Besides that it has mainly been bug fixes with the map generation:

• Player can no longer spawn in rocks
• Rocks can no longer spawn in walls
• Rocks can no longer spawn in other rocks
• Rocks can no longer spawn in positions which would block doors making the map impossible to complete

It's been a while ...

It's been a very, very long time since I last made a post, and although I did take a break from this project for a few months, I have been working on it again in a last few months, and a LOT of changes have been made.

First and foremost, another graphics update. This time, instead of attempting to get better at drawing art myself (which would take away time from my programming, and still wouldn't be as good as years-experienced artists) I decided to head over to OpenGameArt.org and use some free art from there.

On the programming side of things, I have managed to implement a whole bunch of new stuff. The player now has two attack modes, ranged and melee. Current mode is displayed on the HUD.

You can try it out at www.ronerackal.com (requires HTML5 browser, suggest using latest version of Chrome). Controls are WASD or Arrow keys to move, Q to switch weapons, mouse click to attack towards mouse direction.

For default melee, I have currently made it a casted fireball, as shown below (click images for actual-size view)

For melee, a sword. The sword attack can hit multiple enemies as it swipes, and also knocks them back.

Multiple and new monsters have been added in. Monsters can now attack the player (player has a health/hearts bar).

And finally, loot drops are now a thing. Killing monsters yields a chance to drop loot. Loot currently only consists of hearts used to replenish health, and coins, which add up on the HUD.

Room Objectives, Graphics, HUD, and more!

It's been a while since my last blog post, but that doesn't mean I haven't done anything. Today's update includes a large number of changes, and I wasn't ready to make a release until they were all done.

First and foremost, graphics. I've changed the tile size from 32px to 40px, and added new graphics to floors, walls and doors. A comparison between the old version and new shown below:

As you can see in the second image, I have also added in a HUD, displaying the characters current items (which is currently only collected keys). Other things will be added here later (player health, stats, etc).

And of course, if you notice the lock-less door at the bottom, that's part of the new room objectives I've added. When the player enters a new room, if the room has objectives to complete, doors will close open entrance, and the player will have to complete the objective before being able to progress. Currently the only objective is 'kill all monsters in the room'. You can try this out at www.ronerackal.com

Basic dungeon tiles

Been working on some very basic art and came across a problem. I was adding in floor tiles to already existing wall tiles, and the floor just seemed to looked wrong. I asked a couple of friends and beyond 'changing colour' one of them mentioned that the floor, due to the details, was capturing attention too much. As a floor tile, you don't really want the player's attention focused on it.

I ended up taking his advice and making less contrast within the tile itself, to come up with a much more flat look, shown on the right. I think the flooring on the right fits in with the walls a lot better than the old on the left. Next step is doors, both coding and some basic graphics.

Let me know what you guys think, or any other advice you can give.

Room Transitions!

Managed to get room transitions working well now. When moving from one room to another, the camera will smoothly pan across to the new room. Beyond this, monsters will now spawn, but this is very basic at the moment, and the monsters still cannot attack back.

I've been working a bit on some average pixel art, so hopefully in the next version I have something better to visually show than just coloured boxes.

Check out the game at www.ronerackal.com

Pixel art is STILL hard

I've decided to slow down the programming side of things for a little bit and make the graphics a little more presentable, nothing too special, but something better than the current state which is just placeholder squares and boxes.

Downloaded a program called PyxelEdit which is specifically designed for pixel art purposes. Been fiddling around with it a bit, it has really great tile creation features.

I'm going to work a little bit on the graphics, on and off throughout the project, and hopefully by the end I improve enough to have something decent to show. So far, I'm re-done the 'slime' enemy sprite, so it at least isn't a green box anymore:

Room based camera

Hi all,

I've made a change so that the camera is focused on 1 room, when you move into another room, the camera changes focus onto that room. In the long run the room transitioning will be smoother, like in 2D zelda games.

My next task I'm going to focus on is getting monsters spawning when you enter rooms, and restricting room access with win conditions. For starters, you must kill all monsters in the room to progress to the next. Later on other things may happen instead, like completing the puzzle in the room to progress.

Below is a screenshot of the new camera positioning. A minimap and inventory HUD will be eventually added, not sure exactly where those should go, and any input would be appreciated.

Shooting and Monsters

I've managed to get some basic (and knowingly buggy) shooting going, as well as a monster, who currently just sits there and does nothing to defend itself.

I've realised that, since I want the monsters to be room-based (that is, confined to the one room), it is really easier for me to implement the room-camera movement first, before implementing monsters completely, so that is what I will now be working on. Once that is done, adding monsters in procedurally should be quite easy.

Game uploaded!

So, it's been a while since I've posted, but I've been working on this a lot in the mean time. I've acquired web hosting and uploaded the game (since it's all javascript/HTML5 it should just run, if you have a latest browser).
Try it out at www.ronerackal.com

Additions since last time:
- Dungeon levels, can complete the dungeon and move on to the next, which will generate a larger dungeon
- Can pick up keys now, player has an inventory (not visually shown on HUD)
- Unlock doors using keys of same colour
- Lots and lots of behind the scenes code cleanup and refactoring
- Initial monster code, which isn't visually represented currently, but it exists so adding monsters (next step) will be a quick job

Next steps that I will be working on in the next few days are:
- Getting monsters visibly rendered
- Getting player to have simple shooting combat, and using this to test monsters health system

No screenshots today, but www.ronerackal.com to try out a working version of the game. This is where I will be pushing out updates to.

New dungeon generation!

Changed the way the dungeon generates so less keys and less back-and-forth is needed, creating more interesting and less linear and boring maps.