Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

7DRL Attempt: Decimation

3 views
Skip to first unread message

Ed

unread,
Mar 7, 2009, 10:30:26 AM3/7/09
to
I'm gonna start coding my 7DRL now - I came up with the idea last week
and wrote down the basic rules. The game's gonna be pretty simplistic,
seeing as I've never had much luck with big projects and I'll be busy
with work throughout the week.

The concept of Decimation (aka Zero Hero Day, aka The Roguelike That
You Can Play With Only Your Numpad) is that you are the number zero,
and you wish, as zero does in its nihilistic way, to annihilate all
the other numbers. But unlike the other numbers, you have no melee
attacks - instead you have four special abilities triggered by the
arithmetic operator keys +, -, *, and /, which polymorph numbers into
other numbers, the goal being to reduce them to zero. (In case you're
wondering what the point of + and * are, numbers "wrap around" using
modulo arithmetic when they reach ten or above.)

I'll be writing Decimation in C#. I don't think I'll be using any sort
of libraries such as libtcod-net, because the size of the game map is
going to be pretty small, but that might change...

Ed

unread,
Mar 7, 2009, 3:39:41 PM3/7/09
to
Oh, man, I might have set my sights too low... I've accomplished
nearly everything I had planned for this little game (still want the
enemies to seek the player, and I was hoping to have some MIDI's play
when you win or lose, but that wasn't all that important, and I might
also want to highlight enemies that can see the player)... and I've
hardly spent any time on it at all!

Guess I just overcompensated for last year, when I had hardly any time
to work on "Rogue Battalion" due to work, and while I'm working again
this year, I designed this Decimation game to be REALLY simple! ;)

I guess I just need to finish these last few features, polish some
stuff up if necessary, maybe make a Mono compile if I can, and post it
on a website somewhere next week! (Need to get my own web server back
up and running... :P)

Oh well, nothing wrong with setting realistic goals! :D

Darren Grey

unread,
Mar 7, 2009, 4:40:42 PM3/7/09
to

Heh, well done so far then. Maybe you should make 7 1DRLs? ;)

--
Darren Grey

Ido Yehieli

unread,
Mar 7, 2009, 6:14:11 PM3/7/09
to
On Mar 7, 9:39 pm, Ed <edko...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I guess I just need to finish these last few features, polish some
> stuff up if necessary, maybe make a Mono compile if I can, and post it
> on a website somewhere next week!

Make it bigger, better, faster :)

I'd use the extra time if I were you.

-Ido.

Ed

unread,
Mar 9, 2009, 9:14:45 AM3/9/09
to
> Make it bigger, better, faster :)
>
> I'd use the extra time if I were you.
>
> -Ido.

Well, I was thinking of an additional "feature" - maybe there could be
multiple levels, so when you clear out all the numbers on one level, a
new level appears with more numbers on it?

Ed

unread,
Mar 10, 2009, 9:33:37 AM3/10/09
to
Oh, last night I set up a new personal homepage... I put in a section
for Decimation, so that's where you'll find the game come Friday...
man, I really have been wasting my time, I haven't worked on the game
since Saturday! :(

http://edkolis.exofire.net/decimation.php

I promise though that come Friday I'll at least post what I have so
far - the only crucial bit missing is making the enemies seek the
player; the rest is just fluff ;)

Ed

unread,
Mar 11, 2009, 10:14:45 AM3/11/09
to
OK, last night I got the "monsters" (numbers) to seek after the
"hero" (zero) - simpler than I thought - and also, monsters that can
see the hero are highlighted in red, while tiles that monsters can see
are highlighted in brown, so you can see at a glance the "threats" and
"danger zones" - something which might be useful for "stealth"
roguelikes! :)

Also, I noticed that now that monsters seek the player, the game is
MUCH harder than it used to be, such that it was practically
impossible to win... so I asked around for some suggestions, seeing as
"raise player HP" and such is kinda boring... one guy came up with a
clever solution though... previously, I'd had the player gain 10 HP
every time he defeated a monster, but that wasn't enough seeing as
monsters did a lot more damage than that; this guy suggested that the
player gain half the HP he had lost, so if he were at 60/100 HP, he
would be restored up to 80/100 HP!

Or maybe the restoration should not only increase the player's current
HP, but reduce the max HP by the same amount, such that if you're at
60/100, you get restored to 80, but then if you lose 40 more HP
fighting the next monster and wind up at 40/80, you only get restored
back up to 60/60 the next time... might be useful in other games to
prevent "power inflation"!

Ed

unread,
Mar 13, 2009, 5:52:36 PM3/13/09
to
Well, I've posted my 7DRL here:
http://edkolis.exofire.net/decimation.php

Rather simplistic, but hey, at least I got it done! ;)

Darren Grey

unread,
Mar 21, 2009, 1:22:11 PM3/21/09
to
On Mar 13, 9:52 pm, Ed <edko...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, I've posted my 7DRL here:http://edkolis.exofire.net/decimation.php
>
> Rather simplistic, but hey, at least I got it done! ;)

Well done! I've just played this, and sent a review to be hosted on
Cymon's Games. Overall I'm extremely disappointed that you didn't
include more levels, since this is an awesome game! I strongly
encourage you to do a little more work on this. Some advice on
improvements:

-Limit hp recovery so that it reduces max hp too (like you thought
about before). At the moment there seems to be a bug that lets your
hp go way above 100. In general it's too easy at present, since it's
no sweat to recover any hp you lose - with constantly degrading HPMax
the game would be much more fun.
-Fix the display a little so that messages aren't lost. Could maybe
be simplified to say "1 does 10 damage" instead of listing every
single attack.
-More more more levels! Even just the same level repeated ad
infinitum would be nice, with a score at the end for how far you
progressed (something like score = 1000 * number of kills / no turns
used)
-Needs experimentation, but maybe make it real time - say one turn
every second at max. This way you only have a short amount of time to
make calculations in your head.
-Otherwise measure the time you take and factor that into final score,
kinda like in Minesweeper and Solitaire.
-Highscore list at the end!

The gameplay is beautifully simple and addictively fun - would be a
shame not to see more come from it.

Heh, and it only just occurred to me why it's called "Decimation"...

--
Darren Grey - http://gruesomegames.com
"It is pitch black. You are likely to eat someone..."

Ed

unread,
Mar 21, 2009, 2:12:48 PM3/21/09
to
Wow, thanks! :) I look forward to reading the review!
0 new messages