7DRLPC Thread - Reviews, YAVPs, Bug Reports
Antoine
To gain 7DRLPC points, post your reviews, YAVPs, and bug reports here.
(Reviews should be constructive writeups of at least 25 words, bug
reports should be reproducible.)
The contest runs from 6 April to 12 April in whatever time zone you
feel like.
Antoine (who has just got back from holiday).
Antoine
Review: Fatherhood (by Jeff Lait)
Fatherhood is a puzzle-game in Roguelike layout. The two notable
gimmicks are:
- no monsters to fight, only terrain hazards to overcome (spreading
fire and rising waters)
- you have three ever-mischievous children (Primus, Secundus and
Tertius, or something like that - alias 1,2 and 3).
The AI for the kids is distinctly reminiscent of a Nethack pet,
controlled by praise and scoldings rather than tripe rations and
whacks with a +0 club. They gambol around with scant regard for their
own safety - you might think they are under your control but this
'control' is tenuous at best. Its like an onscreen metaphor for the
difficulties of writing a roguelike with three toddlers crawling
around your feet.
The terrain hazards are good and one could well imagine that an entire
game could be focused around putting out fires and controlling water
(and planting trees, and digging tunnels, and damming rivers, and
making firebreaks, and, and...) with no monsters at all. A while back
I was wondering about a ranger game where the goal is to put out
forest fires while Orcs and dragons are running up and setting more
and more new fires. Perhaps it could work something like this.
A couple of notes Jeff - 'drowns' is a bit nervewracking for a mere
dip in the water - was that deliberate? - or should you save it for
when someone actually dies? Also, the score seems to be behaving
oddly.
Nice work
A.
Jeff Lait
> Let this be the official thread for members of the 7DRLPC Competition.
>
> To gain 7DRLPC points, post your reviews, YAVPs, and bug reports here.
> (Reviews should be constructive writeups of at least 25 words, bug
> reports should be reproducible.)
Woohoo! I've been hard at work playing 7DRLs, now it is time to start
putting to the screen some reviews.
First up:
Starcraft Rogue Mercenaries (SCRM)
I should note that I played version 005, Corremn spent the days after
the challenge rapidly releasing bugfixes to the initial 7DRL release.
=========
Mechanics
=========
SCRM is mission based. The missions appear to be fixed in nature but
with the maps for the missions randomized. The missions are not
independent - you are allowed to take allies that survive to help on
your next mission. My experience suggests this is a very necessary
thing to do as you need cross fire to avoid taking damage from
zerglings.
Combat is ranged and action-oriented, in the vein of DoomRL. Most
battles can be performed by hitting 'ff' to fire at the closest foe.
Additional tactics arise in several ways:
* You have supporting marines. By getting the foe in both your
ranges, you can double the damage per turn. You also have to balance
off who is taking the damage to avoid casualities - those who escape
will get healed. You don't have precise control of the supporting
characters, relying on simple orders (Follow, stand still, wander,
etc)
* Time to attack vs. move is decoupled. Each character has a
different attack rate and movement rate. Because attacking takes
longer than moving, you are able to retreat to lure foes out of cover.
* Cover system. Any character in a tree square gets a 30% cover.
This simple rule ensures that battles aren't just a matter of spamming
attack when you first see the foe, you are rewarded for getting the
fight to occur where you and your allies are in cover and your foe is
not.
No healing or regeneration occurs during the mission, a fact that
helps ensure one isn't tempted to tread too far from the mission at
hand.
==========
Aesthetics
==========
The levels I reached were a mix of light forest, mountains, and
water. The level design felt open and pleasant. The use of multiple
colours for the grass and walls provides excellent texture. The
attempt to provide water animation was noble, but I found it somewhat
distracting, it felt often as if it was flashing rather than the
rolling waves that I think was intended. I'm not sure what a better
solution to that would be.
Enemies that I encountered were easy to distinguish from the
background. The rarity of foes on the first levels built up tension
when exploring and a feeling of exhileration when something red showed
up in the viewport. Battles are very well done - the blood splatters
for the enemies, and, more impressive, the visceral shock of the
screen flashing red when you are hit.
Not using ASCII, SCRM tries several targeting solutions that are made
possible by being able to overdraw characters. One nice effect is the
green square to mark creatures with cover. Unlike some (covered)
status on the status bar, this lets one keep ones attention on the
screen when plotting combat. The targeting cursor is likewise a red
box, but this I object to. The red box feels like an error box. When
targeting a foe, white Xs are overdrawn to show the path of the
projectile. This is a good idea but is ugly in practice. A better
solution I have seen is to overdraw arrows to show the path.
Similarly, the weapons have a maximum range, but that is not shown in
the UI, you are left to try and attack and get a out of range error.
The arrows/Xs should turn red at the end of your range.
The presence of help, mission description, and nice touches like the
"Go! Go! Go!" make the game feel polished.
=========
Nit Picks
=========
The presence of a hints.txt which is empty seems to be a mean taunt.
On help screens you are prompted to use +/- to scroll. Whenever you
have + to scroll, you should also accept = so people don't have to hit
the Shift key to scroll. (This is a surprisingly common convention)
I would also suggest making it a multi-line scroll as well.
A lot of the menus have a [x] to close. The oddest is [x] to begin:
why not enter or space?
I wonder at the gender of the marines when I get "it is healthy" as
the status report.
The lack of vi keys makes it hard to play on laptops. Worse yet, the
regular number keys can't be used so I can't even do emergency
diagonals with the top row of numbers. Note that using the embedded
numberpad would eliminate the l key, which is also the only key I
think standing in the way of vi keys working.
Tracking the status of your allies is painful as you have to keep
looking at them. It would be very good to have a onscreen HUD showing
the wounded state of your allies.
At the start when you are dropped off, you are all on the same
square. This left me with the impression I was the dark grey @ and
that I had no allies.
The second mission's text is missing a Y in "drones before theY can
colonise"
=======
Victory
=======
I only got as far as the ghost mission. I managed to locate the
ghost, but could not figure out how to "capture" him to return to the
evac point. Still some days left in the week to see if I can get this
point.
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)
Jeff Lait
=========
Mechanics
=========
Chrysalis is a Huge World roguelike. You start as a single @ in the
midst of a very, very, large, continuous, world. How large? You can
easily spend ten minutes walking to your first objective.
The play style is a direct hack and slash approach. Damage is fixed
so you can have a very good expectation of how you will do in a
combat. Enemies can have very different attack speeds. The netural
'z's you harvest for experience early on are very slow attackers so,
with sufficient power, you can kill them before they can damage you.
Levelling is done in an interesting fashion. To make use of your
experience you need to Cocoon, which freezes you in place as you
transform your experience into evolution points. These points can be
applied directly to different parts of your body. Some improvements
are straightforward: evolving your arms improves your attack damage,
your carapace your hit points. Others are more obscure - skills are
unlocked by meeting certain evolution requirements. Some skills even
require you to not have evolved too much in certain areas. This very
cool evolution system is hampered, however, by a complete opaqueness
to the user. When choosing points there is no on screen help (or for
that matter documentation help) about what the points will do: ie,
arms = attack, legs = speed. It may be the author wants skills to be
discovered so not spoiled by on screen help, but I think they should
at least be announced after completing an evolution. When I
discovered the 's'kill key (yes, that is documented, but I had
forgotten about it) I had already learnt a skill.
The opaqueness of the interface also makes it hard to determine how
healing works in the game. I think you heal when cocooned and not
when just wandering (which means you need exp to heal), but I have no
idea how much. The problem is that your HP seems to only be displayed
when you are hit by an enemy so you can't tell when you regained it.
One powerful skill, cannibalism, does provide direct healing for kills
so seems to be the most straight forward approach to solving the
health problem.
Fighting, that I encountered, is all melee based. An explicit 'f'ight
command exists but this is primarily to pick fights with the 'z's to
farm experience. Combat with angered foes can be done with normal
arrow mashing.
The large size of the world might seem at first to be a misfeature.
However, in its defence, you really do need to fight your way to the
first base to evolve enough to stand a chance against the soldiers.
On the other hand, I don't know hwo much fun it would be to travel to
your *second* base since I would think everything in between would be
just steamrollerable. I think it would be better to have only one
base. Or maybe several bases but with a clear order of power with
later ones having more powerful foes.
==========
Aesthetics
==========
A very large world runs the risk of being a very boring world. While
each screen is rather boring - just random obstacles on a constant
shade background, as you walk you transition from terrain to terrain.
Here you start to see the large variety of terrain types present:
deserts, plains, forests, and everything in between. A lot of work
seems to have gone into making sure there are enough transitions that
everything meshes nicely. The overall look feels very voronoi.
Several UI enhancements are present to manage the large world. The
base radar places * on the edges of the screen in the direction of
your foes and is essential to navigating. Likewise, a M will provide
an overview map of the world with your visible screen highlighted.
The UI is very slick and smooth. Choices are cursor-selected and well
highlighted. Unfortuantely, especially on the evolution screen, they
are not well explained. When you start you are faced with the task of
assigning three evolution points. But you aren't told there are
three. Or what these are for.
The intro screen has a nice subtle animation running that acts as a
nice eye-catcher. World generation, that can be slow, has a progress
bar.
The backstory is well written and a nice complement to playing
Starcraft Rogue Mercenaries where you are wearing the other hat.
Encountering a base for the first time makes you go: "Wow!" It is
very cool and feels quite appropriate to see a bit of Angband invading
the peaceful world.
The terrain system uses many different coloured backgrounds. This
works very well in showing lots of terrain graduations, but not so
well when it comes to seeing foes on against the background. I had a
lot of problems on some terrains to see 8s or tell them apart from
simple boulders. I also found myself stuck against rocks on occasion
that had too low contrast to see.
=========
Nit Picks
=========
In the backstory, "marr" should be "mar"
I needed to edit config.txt to turn off font doubling as it was too
high for 1280x768 screen.
The message history disappears after a while, which is good. But when
you hit something afresh your old history restores, making it look
like all of those are new messages. I kept thinking I was hit a few
times quickly.
When cocooned, time seems to pass. But it is not clear that the
system has frozen you out except by your keys not doing anything.
Some explicit "COCOONED" status should be present during this time.
Some form of HUD to track your own HP would be very useful to figure
out the game mechanics. I'm not convinced the opacity is intentional
as excessive detail is given in the combat logs.
=======
Victory
=======
In my first game I started running away from everything and, due to
the slow moving Tasques, reached a base intact. There I was summarily
slaughtered. The second game I did much better by farming z's.
Eventually I got to the point where I could farm 8's, so started on my
way to the nearest base. Then, while in another window to type
something, something happened and when I returned I was faced with
"Oops you seem to have died".
Jeff Lait
=========
Mechanics
=========
MegamanRL is a departure from standard roguelikes. It is, in fact, a
2d platform shooter rendered in ASCII. Actions are still turn based.
It is sort of like playing a platform game with freeze-frame to ensure
you can make all of the jumps perfectly. As such, it has to trade the
accuracy of jumps with the planning of when to make them.
It provides quite a few different levels to play - I gave Bomberman
and Elec Man a good shot in this review. The levels seem to be a few
common rooms pieced together. Each room can, it seems, get some
random obstacles so you can't always complete it in the same manner.
This is a reasonable solution to "How do you make a random puzzle"
problem, but sadly the paucity of levels really makes it self felt.
In the bomber man stage I was convinced I was in an infinite loop
because I seemed to keep fighting the same foes and jumping the same
platforms.
I am not entirely convinced that the levels are always playable. In
both bomberman and elecman I ran into cases where the only way forward
required an impossible jump (such as jumping off a ladder). It could
be I was missing a trick, however.
The jump physics is very fluid, you have respectable hang time and can
move in air. Your own @ has facing as well as its position. This
means that after running away from a foe you need to first turn around
before shooting. Likewise, it adds considerably to the complexity of
the jumping puzzles as you might need to be facing in the right
direction before jumping.
Enemies seem patterned from Megaman foes, but not having played
Megaman, I can't tell for sure. There are charging melee creatures
and flying melee creatures. There are simple X bots that will just
charge in a straight line. There is also a class of shooting monsters
that "shell" and "unshell" themselves. When shelled they are
invulnerable, but they can only attack when unshelled. I found I
could ignore those creatures entirely.
==========
Aesthetics
==========
The look of the levels is very good. A lot of work has gone into
adding texture to the backgrounds, important when it is a side
scroller. Sometimes it can get confusing what is background vs
platform, but not too often. Important structures like walls and
ladders are readily apparent for what they are.
Considerably HUD controls face the player. Some are straightforward,
such as the health bar and the facing indicator. The facing indicator
is both a > vs < for quick reference and a little ascii man that will
also switch to "in air" mode when you are in the air. Angband style
info bars tell you the identity of all foes on your level. This is
how you can track the shell status of Mabmos and Blasters. This isn't
very useful, however, as it isn't where you are looking and there can
be more than one of such on the screen, leaving you unclear which of
the two is shelled. It would be better to update their onscreen
appearance to match their shell status.
Firing your weapon is "instant", except if the foe is more than five
squares away in which case you get a freeze framed plasma bolt on the
screen. This could do with some fast animation to give a sense of
firing. Destroying enemies had no visceral feedback. Likewise, being
hit by enemies was unclear. Only the reduction of the life bar would
bespoke a bump. Part of the problem is that the message bar only
shows the last message and tended to just show the fire message, not
the "you are bumped message" Looking at my post mortem would reveal a
lot of damage messages that I had missed while playing. Because of
this, my games tended to result in me suddenly dying for what felt
like no reason. I'd love to see SCRM style screen flashes on being
hit.
=========
Nit Picks
=========
Scanning mode doesn't tell you what ^ and other terrain features are,
which isn't very helpful when those instantly kill you on contact.
Being killed by spikes gives merely "Perished..." on the high scores.
=======
Victory
=======
For the amount of content, the game should have been made a lot
shorter. It really starts to feel like you are facing an endless
chain of levels, all alike, and so have little motivation to keep
persevering. I hope there is some boss stage, but I'm not sure I can
persevere enough to reach it.
Jeff Lait
> This is the review for Chrysalis
>
> Victory
> =======
>
> In my first game I started running away from everything and, due to
> the slow moving Tasques, reached a base intact. There I was summarily
> slaughtered. The second game I did much better by farming z's.
> Eventually I got to the point where I could farm 8's, so started on my
> way to the nearest base. Then, while in another window to type
> something, something happened and when I returned I was faced with
> "Oops you seem to have died".
In my third game, I managed to gain the Flight skill. This revealed a
serious bug: if you have flight, so does all of the enemies! Seeing
zs and 8s flying over the enemy town seems a bit wrong.
Then, just as I had acquired cannibalism, I encountered a pop up
screen I wanted to dismiss. I hit escape. Game over.
Corremn
> On Apr 7, 4:46 am, Antoine <antoine.from.r...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Let this be the official thread for members of the 7DRLPC Competition.
>
> > To gain 7DRLPC points, post your reviews, YAVPs, and bug reports here.
> > (Reviews should be constructive writeups of at least 25 words, bug
> > reports should be reproducible.)
>
> Woohoo! I've been hard at work playing 7DRLs, now it is time to start
> putting to the screen some reviews.
>
> First up:
> Starcraft Rogue Mercenaries (SCRM)
>
> I should note that I played version 005, Corremn spent the days after
> the challenge rapidly releasing bugfixes to the initial 7DRL release.
Yeah, really buggy first version as I did not have time to play it
before release, took 4 bugfix versions to get it winnable :(.
Used to work, anyway I also binded page up/down that I use.
> A lot of the menus have a [x] to close. The oddest is [x] to begin:
> why not enter or space?
Just my standard. This has been mentioned a few time before so maybe I
should change.
> I wonder at the gender of the marines when I get "it is healthy" as
> the status report.
>
> The lack of vi keys makes it hard to play on laptops. Worse yet, the
> regular number keys can't be used so I can't even do emergency
> diagonals with the top row of numbers. Note that using the embedded
> numberpad would eliminate the l key, which is also the only key I
> think standing in the way of vi keys working.
Something I should look into considering this game has few keys.
> Tracking the status of your allies is painful as you have to keep
> looking at them. It would be very good to have a onscreen HUD showing
> the wounded state of your allies.
Great idea.
> At the start when you are dropped off, you are all on the same
> square. This left me with the impression I was the dark grey @ and
> that I had no allies.
Yep, a bug I could fix but was not essential. However in later mission
you have many allies that makes this a real annoyance.
> The second mission's text is missing a Y in "drones before theY can
> colonise"
>
> =======
> Victory
> =======
>
> I only got as far as the ghost mission. I managed to locate the
> ghost, but could not figure out how to "capture" him to return to the
> evac point. Still some days left in the week to see if I can get this
> point.
To get him to follow you, use the order command 'o', move the cursor
over him and press '2' to get him to follow him. This was intentional
done this way as enemies will not attack him until you directly order
him to follow you. Hopefully you realised you can give individual
orders to your team in this fashion.
> Jeff Lait
> (POWDER:http://www.zincland.com/powder)
Thanks, exellent review. There are quite a few things that I can
take from this and improve future games.
Slash
> Let this be the official thread for members of the 7DRLPC Competition.
>
> To gain 7DRLPC points, post your reviews, YAVPs, and bug reports here.
> (Reviews should be constructive writeups of at least 25 words, bug
> reports should be reproducible.)
>
> The contest runs from 6 April to 12 April in whatever time zone you
> feel like.
<game>
Chrysalis
</game>
<miniReview>
...Peace was enjoyed by all on your planet, until that fateful day
human spaceships began landing one after another... drilling the
mountains and piercing through the oceans they took the good of the
planet for themselves. Soon, extinction of your race began, the whole
ecosystem been severely affected; only critters and Tarsque roamed the
devasted land. Full of hatred for the selfish invaders, you are driven
to bring carnage over their puny nests, rampage and anihilate them.
Chrysalis, a 7DRL made by sinoth and buub0nik for the 2008 7DRL
challenge, and powdered by Jice's awesome libtcod. In the game you
control an alien creature on its quest to drive mankind off its
planet.
The game is overall pretty complete for a 7DRL, and plays quite nicely
for the first minutes. The premise is nice, and it includes a powerful
world generator and special effects courtesy of libtcod. You can check
the map once generated as it is output to a bmp file (looks pretty
nice)
The advancement system is unique and interesting, you get to evolve
your alien and shape it based on 6 different possible choices for
limbs, internal and external organs, which will make you stronger,
faster or just let you use different special skills.
The world is interesting and huge, dont be discouraged if you are
spawned in a big, sandy, uninteresting desert... that happened to me
the first time and I was pretty disappointed :D, the map command will
let you get out of such a hot situation.
Enemies with ranged attack and better armed bases, (probably armed
with turrets, robots, etc) would make the game more interesting. Right
now the supposedly highly technologically advanced invaders seems to
have the same tech level as angband orcs-
Talking about angband, bases look exactly like an angband town, which
is funny but doesnt goes along with the theme xD
Another nice thing would be allowing allying with other aliens and
coordinate a strike into the human bases, they deserve it!
As for the UI, I would suggest adding some critical info to the
screen, (like, say, current HP?), also, the message window overlaps
the radar pinpoints when they are pointing north.
However, my main suggestion would be to GET RID of the ESC or Q, "exit
without confirmation anytime" functionality, which is annoying, VERY
annoying... I lost some good characters to this :( GET RID OF THAT
please! :D
Also, and while I understand this is a 7DRL, it would have been much
nicer if you had more than 1 kind of human enemies... the game, to say
the truth, becomes absolutely boring once you conquer your first base
(although it feels nice to rampage through the puny '1's when you are
a strong, fast, evil alien)
</miniReview>
<bugs>
I have to say that the game is pretty buggy... I found two annoying
bugs
* Some time in the mid game (probably when you have a lot of speed)
only diagonal directions work, which means you travel much more slowly
through the open landscape
* Some other times, also after powering your alien, the game just
hanged and I could move in no direction :(
</bugs>
<victoryPost>
Slashie destroyed all 10 power cores and anihilated mankind on his
planet
Pictures:
http://www.slashie.net/share/chrys4.png
http://www.slashie.net/share/crysEnding.png
</victoryPost>
--
Slashie
http://slashie.net
Antoine
Hi
This is a review of Tribe (7DRL) by Kadwiell.
http://irrasjonal.net:8080/7drl/tribe/#releases
Tribe is a very nice piece of work for a week, I must say. The concept
is that you are a goblin, you lead the other goblins, as well as your
@ you have a posse of little g's following you around, you can give
them orders. There is a system where you can group the goblins into
squadrons, you can give each squadron an order ('attack', 'follow me',
'stay where you are', 'hide'). [Not unlike the Guild system]
The opponents are human adventurers who enter the dungeon and attack
you - you need to lead your goblins to defeat them and eventually
place bombs to cut off the dungeon entrance.
I played a game. I found some goblins who I could lead, they started
following me around. I managed to get them all equipped and then a
single adventurer appeared and pretty much killed me and all my
goblins very quickly. An end-of-game log revealed that dozens
(literally) of high level adventurers had already entered the dungeon.
Seemed a bit harsh - though I should have been quicker to get started,
perhaps. Anyway, one doesn't expect balance from a 7DRL, it is enough
to test ideas.
Kadwiell, some suggestions if you want to develop this further:
- the goblins are kinda cute in the way they mill around, not always
doing exactly what you want - but it could become frustrating in time
- more obedience would be good :)
- there needs to be some way to instantly, visually tell one goblin
from another on the main screen
- there needs to be a better way to manage inventories (other than
bumping into a 'g' to exchange items).
But the amount of AI and interface you've managed to pack in is
already very impressive given the limited time available!
A.
Jeff Lait
ARGH!
At second last base. See the base core. Decide to try out Mind Slice
Destroy base core with 63 damage. Am then frozen in place sufficeinly
long
to be mobbed and killed by a bynch of soldiers. ARGHHH!
Bug: Can't 'f' on diagonals with roguelike keys.
I think time passes on evolve menu if cocooned which explains dying
while choosing stat point. Ie, you cocoon, sit facing the screen
wondering which point to pick, but behind the screen someone starts
hitting you can killing you. Time should only restart when you leave
the screen.
Damm. Killed again by having 450xp! Swearing off any non-necessary
upgrades
Victory: I have vanquished the invaders!
I think I had 1000 unused XP at that point :>
Jeff Lait
> Victory
> =======
>
> For the amount of content, the game should have been made a lot
> shorter. It really starts to feel like you are facing an endless
> chain of levels, all alike, and so have little motivation to keep
> persevering. I hope there is some boss stage, but I'm not sure I can
> persevere enough to reach it.
Okay, I have persevered some more. It seems I was very close to the
boss stages when I gave up before. I've now made it to the Elecman
and Bombman boss stages. Bug: Elecman is actually Cutman.
Facing both elecman and bombman had me jumping around for ten minutes
as my blaster seemed to do nothing. Do I need to upgrade my weapon
with a lucky drop? Or use a clever tactic? Again, I feel like I'm
missing feedback if my blaster is doing anything.
Bug: Start of game says ? for help. ? does nothing. Indeed, there
are a lot of 'secret' keys in this game - like how to pick up items
(,).
Jeff Lait
> Let this be the official thread for members of the 7DRLPC Competition.
>
> To gain 7DRLPC points, post your reviews, YAVPs, and bug reports here.
> (Reviews should be constructive writeups of at least 25 words, bug
> reports should be reproducible.)
>
> The contest runs from 6 April to 12 April in whatever time zone you
> feel like.
Useful as I just changed timezones :>
This is a review of Numbers
=========
Mechanics
=========
Numbers is a simple maze exploration roguelike in which you try to
find the upstairs and reach the end of the maze. The maze is embedded
in large numerals which is thematically appealing but also prevents
painfully long dead ends making the maze itself rather nice to
navigate. Similarly, the LOS is diamond shaped but can see through
walls. This decision is greatly improves the maze exploration as you
don't have to do as much tedious exploration to make sure each dead
end lacks the stair case.
A bunch of "light beams" provide random good effects when triggered.
These are varied and fun, ranging from revealing information to
erasing the maze.
Enemies are slow moving and can be largely avoided through careful
planning. Which is useful as the combat is very different. Each
round of combat requires you to answer a math problem. Get it right,
and the creature dies. Wrong, and you lose one of your three health
points. No natural regeneration occurs so accuracy is demanded.
There is no timer on answering the questions which becomes useful
later in the game when the questions become hard.
The math problems start trivial but quickly ramp up. A surprisingly
broad selection of math is covered - usually such a game restricts to
+-*/, but this game asks for primes, exponents, fraction
simplification, etc.
==========
Aesthetics
==========
The title screen is thematically perfect and makes you feel you are
facing Apple IIe edutainment software. Exploring the menus reveals
there are many different display modes (I stuck with roguelike of
course), but, more importantly, a in-game cutscene for the
introduction! Very well done.
The game itself plays very smoothly. Roguelike keys are there for
laptop users. The status bar uses a different font from the roguelike
view so stands out nicely. I was afraid when I saw the WIMP interface
that question answering would detract from the game-flow. It
doesn't. It smoothly integrates into the combat despite (Or because?)
it is a pop-up window.
The question screen includes information on the math terms if your
memory needs a refresh. If you get it wrong, it reports the right
answer and provides you that extra info. Which I admit is a bit of a
taunt when it is addition. The click to a wikipedia link is very
thoughtful.
=========
Nit Picks
=========
Auto climbing stairs is surprising. The status message also seems to
be lost leaving me wondering what happened. The same problem occurs
with the new level beams.
The number of health points is on the window title bar which I never
looked at as it feels like an in-window game. I suggest putting this
in a HUD somewhere.
Maybe I'm too much a C++ person, but 5^3 == 6.
When asked: "What is 5!" I was a bit too literal and answered "5"
Stairs should be bright white even when out of FOV so you aren't
searching for them when you get a "You sense the stairs"
=======
Victory
=======
I finally managed to work out 5^6 by:
5^6 = 5^3*5^3 = 125*125 = (120+5)*(120+5).
I now feel that having memorized all the primes less than 100 was not
a waste.
45 battles, 43 won, 20 beams used, game length 16 min 47 sec
Jeff Lait
This is a review for Trap Rogue
=========
Mechanics
=========
TrapRogue is a combatless roguelike. It does this by pitting you
against the enviornment: a trap laden dungeon. Lacking combat for XP,
it rewards you with a new level whenever you descend another level
deeper. I think, however, this might work better if it were XP for
explored territory so dropping a trap door would not instantly gain a
level.
Traps can do numerous things: teleport, trapdoor, damage, forget
location of traps, etc.
A very clever approach to digging is used. You can dig at any time,
but doing so costs you hit points. You need to thus trade off trap
damage with digging routes. The help suggests it is impossible to win
without digging, but I used enough trap doors I never had to dig.
The mazes, oddly enough, are steel walls prohibiting digging.
Unfortunate as I really wanted to dig there to cut corners.
There is no food clock to restrict exploration so there is no time
limits. Likewise, you can regenerate by standing still so sadly any
trap that doesn't instantly kill you is irrelevant. One of these two
things should be fixed to make it an actual game.
I think there is a fun game here - one in which you have to be careful
to minimize your steps and retrace known squares as much as possible.
Unfortunately, the heal-by-waiting renders that game unnecessary.
Acquiring the axe instantly wins the game. There is no need to climb
up again. As such, trap doors are actually beneficial as they bypass
a level. If you had to return, they'd at least leave you without
knowing the fastest way out.
==========
Aesthetics
==========
The caves are rendered with nice solid walls with brown FOV. Feels
like earthen caves. Unfortunately, the supposed steel walls of the
mazes are rendered the same way.
Falling rock traps leave the square you were in caved in with solid
rock - a very neat effect.
=========
Nit Picks
=========
Pressing ? for list of commands does nothing on intro screen
Does not clear screen so my white background persists
Gah0 need v5 2eys! I have to keep toggling numlock to access ? or >.
Some rockS fall from the ceiling: is missing the s in rocks.
=======
Victory
=======
You have found the Axe of Verwiz! Congratulations! Press space to end
the game.
Slash
<game>
Traprogue
</game>
<miniReview>
...Peace was enjoyed by all on your planet, until that fateful day
human spaceships began landing one after another... drilling the
mountains and piercing through the oceans they took the good of the
planet for themselves. Soon, extinction of your race began, the whole
ecosystem been severely affected; only critters and Tarsque roamed the
devasted land. Full of hatred for the selfish invaders, you are driven
to bring carnage over their puny nests, rampage and anihilate them.
TrapRogue, a 7DRL made by nate879 for the 2008 7DRL challenge. In the
game, you are thrown into an empty dungeon and have to make your way
down to the Axe of Sumthing artifact, basically avoiding traps that
reduce your HP and confuse you by juggling you around.
The game is got a good a crawl-like UI, and sports a nice dungeon
generation. As I said, the dungeon is monsters-free, but it still a
dangerous place full of nasty traps. Gameplay is straightforward,
explore the level as less as you can trying to find the stairs,
remember a safe path in case you have to walk back if you didnt find
it.... some traps reduce your HP some other dont. Eventually you will
find the Axe and emerge victorious.
The game would be much interesting if there were dungeon branches
including dead-ends which would require you to walk back. It is too
random, because you basically pray you wont step on a trap, there is
no way to prevent it... but it is like that in all roguelikes, isnt
it :P
Nice job for a 7DRL, it lacks some cool unique features and it a bit
boring, but it is stable and solid. good grounds for a roguelike
engine!
</miniReview>
<bugs></bugs>
<victoryPost>
Slashie found the Axe of Verwiz
Picture:
http://www.slashie.net/share/trapRogue.png
</victoryPost>
Slash
> On Apr 7, 3:46 am, Antoine <antoine.from.r...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Let this be the official thread for members of the 7DRLPC Competition.
>
> ...Peace was enjoyed by all on your planet, until that fateful day
> human spaceships began landing one after another... drilling the
> mountains and piercing through the oceans they took the good of the
> planet for themselves. Soon, extinction of your race began, the whole
> ecosystem been severely affected; only critters and Tarsque roamed the
> devasted land. Full of hatred for the selfish invaders, you are driven
> to bring carnage over their puny nests, rampage and anihilate them.
Dammit, remove this... sorry!
SNIP
--
Slashie
Antoine
Has everyone completed their seven days of 7DRLPC?
If everyone has finished (in your various time zones), I will do the
scoring.
But let me know if you are still going and I will hold off...
A.