It's been a while since I posted a roguelike and I've learned enough
to make starting all over a good idea since my last attempt.

This is fortuitous, as my last attempt has apparently been lost in a
disk shuffle.

So: I present to you, Wizard. A roguelike game of playing...a wizard.
(May eventually be expanded to other spellcasting classes. May
eventually *Have* classes)

I warn you, this is a hobby for me and was originally started so I
could learn how to use events. That being said, it looks barer than it
could be because I've spent the past nine days just working on engine
upgrades.

The Alpha version has (limited) prefix/suffix spellcasting, four (very
different) player races (It randomly selects one for the PC), one
animal (Rat, because you have to have rats), three monsters (None of
them standard, even the Skeleton), random map generation (Of course),
ASCII graphics (A roguelikes' natural state) and experience gain with
stat increase.

The latest build is at: http://www.mouse-producedgames.com/Wizard4.zip

(If the link doesn't work, try changing it to 1, 2, or 3. My webhost
is slow to update files, so I have to upload a new file to get a new
version up)

I forgot to take off some test limitations; that last version had only a
20x20 map and 5 animals.

That is now fixed; new download is
http://www.mouse-producedgames.com/Wizard.zip

It's not a good idea to make each monster type a separate class.  It's
better to have one "monster" class, which would allow you to store the
monster types in a file so you could edit them without recompiling the
program.

I also found what looks like a bug: when I attacked with FireBreath,
the game said "You attack for -2147483648 damage!"

It immediately crashes on startup, and prints out quite an unfriendly
unhandled exception message. I tried to dump it to a file, but then it
just prints out a different error and the dumped file ends up being
empty. :/

That could work better, but I could use some more detail - Can you
describe in brief how you would set up the monster/animal class(es)?

Thanks.

 > I also found what looks like a bug: when I attacked with FireBreath,
 > the game said "You attack for -2147483648 damage!"

I just tested it and got the same result. Probably happening due to some
change when I changed the stats from discrete values to dictionary
lookup values.

Some computers just seem to refuce to run .Net
I'm no expert, so all I can do is throw out the obvious questions.

Do you have the .Net 3.5 runtime?
Are the fonts set to raster and 8x12? (One person had problems due to
his font settings)
Any chance you could compile it on your comp and see if it'll run then
and if not, what error message(s) come up when trying to compile?
(Visual C# Express)

Thanks for any feedback.

Narf the Mouse <largemo...@gmail.com> wrote:

In C, a monster struct would look like this:

struct monster
{
    enum monster_num mnum; /* Tells you what kind of monster it is */
    /* Followed by whatever stats - hit points, defence, etc. - are
     * specific to an instantiated monster rather than a fundamental
     * property of the kind of monster it is. You might even put in
     * some function-pointer variables for things like being able to
     * dynamically change which activity selection algorithm the monster
     * uses. */

The "permonst" (PERmanent MONSTer - the in-memory representation of a
*kind* of monster) would look something like:

struct permonst
{
    char *name; /* becomes a pointer to an in-memory copy of the name
                 * string read in from the DB */
    /* what follows is a bunch of stuff about the monster's default
     * properties that you read in from the DB. */

enum monsternum is an enumerated type providing unique tags for all the
monsters. How you construct the definition of that type is left as an
exercise for the reader.
--
\_\/_/ some girls wander by mistake into the mess that scalpels make
 \  /  are you the teachers of my heart? we teach old hearts to break
  \/    --- Leonard Cohen, "Teachers"

When I try to run it, it gives me a strange error message:

Unhandled Exception: System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load
file or ass
embly 'System.Core, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b77a5c56193
4e089' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file
specified.
File name: 'System.Core, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b77a5c
561934e089'
   at Wizard.Character.StartingDataModification()
   at Wizard.Drakon..ctor(CharacterControlTypes characterControlType,
RaceTypes
raceTypes, AnimalTypes animalTypes, MonsterTypes monsterTypes,
Subtypes subtypes
)
   at Wizard.CharacterFactory.Generate(CharacterControlTypes
characterControlTyp
e, RaceTypes raceTypes, AnimalTypes animalTypes, MonsterTypes
monsterTypes, Subt
ypes subtypes)
   at Wizard.Program.Main(String[] args)

WRN: Assembly binding logging is turned OFF.
To enable assembly bind failure logging, set the registry value [HKLM
\Software\M
icrosoft\Fusion!EnableLog] (DWORD) to 1.
Note: There is some performance penalty associated with assembly bind
failure lo
gging.
To turn this feature off, remove the registry value [HKLM\Software
\Microsoft\Fus
ion!EnableLog].

Any clue how I can fix it?

I'm an amature at understanding stuff like that, but 'System.Core' is
probably the namespace file for 'System', which sounds like you don't
have .Net 3.5 installed.

If you already have it, then I got nothing.

Can anyone explain what the more esetoric stuff means? I've included an
'As far as I know' explaination interspersed. (Stuff pulled out of a hat
:) )

'System.IO' is the namespace that deals with file input-output. I guess
it's used to load the rest of .Net. Since you do have System.IO, you
probably have an earlier version of .Net.
'System' is one of the basic .Net namespaces. Sounds like it can't find
version 3.5 of it. (Hence my explaination)

It errored out on the function that sets some of the starting data for a
new character that can't be set in the base classes' constructor.
(Wizard.Character.StartingDataModification)

This was done while generating a Drakon race player character, the first
character generated, so if the error isn't missing .Net 3.5, it's
probably either in the derived class Drakon or the base class Character.

The generation was done by the static method Generate in the class
CharacterFactory, which does pretty much what it sounds like - Makes
characters. The only input it has in the process of actually making the
character is providing data.
Main is the first thing run in the code.

This sounds like it would provide more data. Anyone know how to turn
that on? The provided explaination of how isn't really comprehensive.

Any chance you could try compiling it yourself?

Hope any of that babble helped.

Thanks for the info. :)

I do see some benifits; namely, more general handling and less need for
special cases.

The downside is that it sounds a bit restrictive of special cases.