Just a sheep

It seems rather popular at the moment, opening your design decisions to the world. I don't have the hopes of attracting the masses to this blog, it's more a space for my thought processes to be nailed down and to document the journey.

In fact this first existed as just an OpenOffice document (you might be able to spot as OpenOffice insisted with it's red undulating scrawl that it be capitalised not just once but twice). This was mainly because when faced with the task of naming the blog a blank space just opened up in my mind and was flooded with possibilities, is this going to be my development blog, perhaps a space for all my programming attempts or was it going to be just this game, this Cogband-esque effort?

I think i'd pretty much decided it was going to be the page for just this game, for better or worse it might motivate me to completion. 


I suppose you might want to know what kind of game I'm planning, well it's based on a category of games called roguelikes, except I have planned for a few deviations from the norm, using non-ASCII art for a start and actually having a plot, if the player ever finds out about it that is.

Projects usually start small with some ambition, lets get a list of what I think is going to be included in this game.

• A starting roleplaying scenario to choose initial party composition, I'm afraid there is going to be a story.
• Multiple Party Members – with programmable actions.
• A Marching order that adapts to the dungeon layout.
• Adjustable and adaptable weapons, upgradeable via cogs, pipes, valves, blades and other components. Inspired by Resonance of Fate.
• Upgradeable towns.

Then the standard stuff

• Combat system
• Randomly generated dungeons
• End game goal.
• Deep and varied equipment
• Customizable characters – Via skill trees and other means.
• Stat allocation

So far I have

• A window that shows a stats bar at the bottom of the screen,
• The ability to change which character you are controlling and which is being displayed in the stats screen.
• A very poorly randomly generated map.
• Detection of characters bumping into walls.
• Window that works with adjustable tile sizes and map sizes.

Next

Work on camera and scroll bars if necessary to view dungeon. Centring on current player optional of course.

Menu for launching the game/load/save.

One big thing about my code, is I'm trying to make as many things as possible optional or at least adjustable, probably going to have the biggest option menu ever.