7DRL Success: The Adventurer's Guild

[Nolithius]

I am ecstatic, if a bit exhausted, to announce my first entry into the 7DRL
challenge, The Adventurer's Guild!

Playable at:
http://www.nolithius.com/guild

In case you are interested, here is my initial pre-challenge blog post (a
post-mortem is surely to follow!):
http://www.nolithius.com/game-design/plans-for-7drl-challenge

Best of luck to everyone still taking part in the challenge!

Cheers,

Ebyan "Nolithius" Alvarez-Buylla
http://www.nolithius.com

[JO]

Hey is there a search key? I dead ended on level 3. No stairs.
Wandered around until my guys left unpaid.

[Ryan Szrama]

Congrats, Ebyan. Just gave it a go and died out fairly quickly. Didn't encounter enough monsters and wasted too much time exploring. Must dive deeper next time. : )

I also had one dude (green) keep lagging behind... think I'll just leave him next time. Would be nice if I could opt not to pay him any more. : P

-Ryan

[Nolithius]

"JO" <josephbr...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:9e016202-e491-4e9a...@x7g2000pbi.googlegroups.com...

> Hey is there a search key? I dead ended on level 3. No stairs.
> Wandered around until my guys left unpaid.

The dungeon generator ensures connectedness. Be sure to be on the lookout
for odd diagonal connections between rooms.

The faster you descend, the more likely you are to find higher-paying
monsters, and more of them, so as soon as you see those stairs, run for
them!

And here I thought I had made it too easy. ;)

Thanks for trying it, and for the feedback!

[Nolithius]

"Ryan Szrama" <ryan....@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:14385532.461.1332005215462.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@yner4...

> Congrats, Ebyan. Just gave it a go and died out fairly quickly. Didn't
> encounter enough monsters and wasted too much time exploring. Must dive
> deeper next time. : )
>
> I also had one dude (green) keep lagging behind... think I'll just leave
> him next time. Would be nice if I could opt not to pay him any more. : P
>
> -Ryan

In a nod to the original Rogue's food clock, I've made the salary clock
fairly unforgiving. So yes, once you see those stairs, run for them! The
deeper you go the more monsters you find, and the more money they are worth.

Also, the characters follow the leader based on a crude line-of-sight
calculation, so certain corners or hallway crossroads will get them stuck.
Didn't have time to implement A* or Djistra maps, along with about 10 other
features. ;)

Thanks for the support and feedback!

[ivanah...@gmail.com]

Reading the others' posts, I was able to get a good bit farther by diving as quickly as possible. I don't know if this is intended, but Oslo seemed able to kill everything in one hit, so the other three adventurers wound up being liabilities; you don't have the option of not paying them, and they cost a tremendous amount of money relative to Oslo.

At level 12 Rami managed to get separated from everyone else going down the stairs:
http://imgur.com/4cx19

Is there an endgame?

[Nolithius]

> Reading the others' posts, I was able to get a good bit farther by
> diving as quickly as possible. I don't know if this is intended, but
> Oslo seemed able to kill everything in one hit, so the other three
> adventurers wound up being liabilities; you don't have the option
> of not paying them, and they cost a tremendous amount of money
> relative to Oslo.

> At level 12 Rami managed to get separated from everyone else
> going down the stairs:
> http://imgur.com/4cx19

> Is there an endgame?

Oslo is definitely the bread-and-butter, but in the lower levels the special
abilities of the other characters will come in useful, since you are more
likely to be swarmed by monsters.

There is no endgame, it's more of an arcade-style how-low-can-you-go.
Congratulations, by the way, you have the record with level 12!

Thanks for playing and for the feedback,

[Ryan Szrama]

Gave it another shot making a beeline for the stairs on every level and progressed just fine. In fact, once I found out that party members came back once you had enough to pay them, I was set. It was much easier to get gold down there, even if I only had Oslo and Rayn for a while.

People getting "lost" by the pathfinding algo turned into an advantage when you explored all the way through a corridor and found no stairs. It was easy then to switch to another character and continue the search back from the fork in the road.

Unfortunately, I seem to have hit a glitch. I descended to level 11 or so and ended up with no stairs down... so it literally just quit on me. I suppose my fighters retired. : )

https://skitch.com/rszrama/8k9pr/nolithius.com-7drl-the-adventurers-guild

Great fun - will give it another shot later and write up my review!

-Ryan

[Nolithius]

"Ryan Szrama" <ryan....@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:25211177.403.1332019464889.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@ynhs12...

> Gave it another shot making a beeline for the stairs on every
> level and progressed just fine. In fact, once I found out that
> party members came back once you had enough to pay them, I
> was set. It was much easier to get gold down there, even if I
> only had Oslo and Rayn for a while.

I purposely made Oslo the cheapest and the first character, so that, worst
case, as long as you can scrap together $25 every day, you can keep
trucking.

> People getting "lost" by the pathfinding algo turned into an
> advantage when you explored all the way through a corridor
> and found no stairs. It was easy then to switch to another
> character and continue the search back from the fork in the
> road.

Switching characters to optimize the clock is a good technique! This game is
very punishing with regards to level scumming. Loitering, especially around
the first few levels, will run out your money much more quickly than you can
replentish it.

> Unfortunately, I seem to have hit a glitch. I descended to level
> 11 or so and ended up with no stairs down... so it literally just
> quit on me. I suppose my fighters retired. : )
>
> https://skitch.com/rszrama/8k9pr/nolithius.com-7drl-the-adventurers-guild
>
> Great fun - will give it another shot later and write up my
> review!
>
> -Ryan

Thanks again for the feedback, Ryan. From your screenshot, it looks like the
dungeon generator may have errored out. I haven't seen that in development
or playtesting, but will have to keep an eye out for it.

Cheers!

[ivanah...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, March 17, 2012 5:42:42 AM UTC-5, Nolithius wrote:

A minor issue: In this image, Oslo has been placed in the same location as Rayn after taking the stairs down. Very disconcerting, but moving resolved the issue.
http://i.imgur.com/3i8Wn.jpg

[ivanah...@gmail.com]

Okay, a few levels down and now everyone except Rayn has disappeared for real. I moved around, but no one popped back into existence anywhere, even after Rayn died.
http://i.imgur.com/tUGEe.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/rUwRB.jpg

[Nolithius]

And here I was thinking that the game was mostly bug free! ;) Thanks for the
heads up on these two issues, I will be sure to look into them.

I have an inkling of what might be causing the first (overlapping
characters), and, with my last roguelike, Chronophase (4DRL), I ran into a
similar issue to the second one (disappearing characters), which had to do
with the TurnManager's priority queue sorting.

Thanks again!

[Geoffrey White]

Hi,

Very fun game. I love the concept, the four different characters and
their abilities. I don't think the money is balanced right though, and
on level 14 I was presented with a black screen - no map, no @ signs,
nothing. Despite that I still enjoyed the game overall.

- Geoffrey

[Nolithius]

"Geoffrey White" <geoffr...@randomstuff.org.uk.CUTHERE.invalid> wrote in
message news:jk58hl$e3v$1...@dont-email.me...

I have had reports of blank screens now on levels 11, 12, and 14. There is
definitely something going on during level generation that is causing a
fatal error, possibly in the TurnManager's priority queue, or with the
MonsterGenerator. I'll be sure to address it in a patch once the dust
settles a bit.

Thanks for playing it and for the feedback; glad you enjoyed it!

[Konstantin Stupnik]

On 3/19/12 5:18 , Nolithius wrote:
> "Geoffrey White" <geoffr...@randomstuff.org.uk.CUTHERE.invalid>
> wrote in message news:jk58hl$e3v$1...@dont-email.me...
>> Hi,
>>
>> Very fun game. I love the concept, the four different characters and
>> their abilities. I don't think the money is balanced right though, and
>> on level 14 I was presented with a black screen - no map, no @ signs,
>> nothing. Despite that I still enjoyed the game overall.
>>
>> - Geoffrey
>
> I have had reports of blank screens now on levels 11, 12, and 14. There
> is definitely something going on during level generation that is causing
> a fatal error, possibly in the TurnManager's priority queue, or with the
> MonsterGenerator. I'll be sure to address it in a patch once the dust
> settles a bit.

I also experienced this, but on level 18.
Also when entering new level monster can overlap with character.
You see characters, but one of them is receiving damage and (as in my
case) may die eventually.

[Nolithius]

"Konstantin Stupnik" <konstanti...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:jk6qqc$2e4$1...@speranza.aioe.org...

I managed to track down both of these issues and will upload an update with
several bugs fixed shortly. I had to fight the urge to work on some
balancing issues, but I decided against it: in the spirit of the 7DRL
challenge, it will remain the exact same game, minus the bugs.

Thanks for the feedback!

--

[edenicholas]

On 3/17/2012 3:42 AM, Nolithius wrote:
> I am ecstatic, if a bit exhausted, to announce my first entry into the
> 7DRL challenge, The Adventurer's Guild!
>
> Playable at:
> http://www.nolithius.com/guild
>

Just finally got a chance to try this one out. Although I haven't got
too far, the concept is excellent. I really like how the salary of each
adventurer becomes a food clock of sorts, and that if they go unpaid you
are losing an ability out of your arsenal. Clever!