chickhack: a little 7drl for fun
purple...@googlemail.com
I have heard there is this challenge, the 7drl, which sounds very
cool. I am going to make something amusing, it is called Chickhack.
It will be small but perfectly formed; like a chick!
It will be a very "cheep" design :)
Gelatinous Mutant Coconut
>
> It will be a very "cheep" design :)
Dawwwww. (But I have to admit that I was hoping against hope for a
roguelike based on the wonderful world of Jack Chick's religious
tracts.)
Looking forward to see what hatches!
purple...@googlemail.com
Sorry but I do not think it will be very fun to mock a real person,
even when I do not like them. :-( Instead, we all may enjoy a bundle
of cute fluff! Even if it is a fluffy ASCII (perhaps if you use a
decorative font, it will enhance the experience).
Perhaps I will have time to implement mounts?
http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/1170052654314.jpg
purple...@googlemail.com
Ok! I have spent so much time <s>looking at cute pictures</s> doing
painstaking research, but I am anyway getting somewhere! :)
Outstanding issues are here below, some are easy but I list them
anyway to be informative
# nitwit monsters are trying to shoot through walls!
# sometimes, if there are too many trees on a level, there will be a
crash :(
# bootees of water-walking are not quite ready for action yet
# it will be nice if I can have a more "cute" name for magic items, at
present I have "amulet" (L1 magic), "circlet" (L2 magic), and
"crown" (L3 magic), your suggestions are welcome :)
# Important: Must find somewhere to upload the finished game! Is
there some common-ground anywhere, or must I find own hosting?
Typical, this only occurs to me now :)
# must fine-tune creature populations; sometimes powerful creatures
appear very out-of-depth
# combat involves a lot of "you missed"/"he missed" currently, must
fine-tune this also
I think that I shall complete properly!
Darren Grey
> On 9 Mar, 19:45, purplefla...@googlemail.com wrote:
>
> > Bright greetings,
>
> > I have heard there is this challenge, the 7drl, which sounds very
> > cool. I am going to make something amusing, it is called Chickhack.
> > It will be small but perfectly formed; like a chick!
>
> > It will be a very "cheep" design :)
>
> Ok! I have spent so much time <s>looking at cute pictures</s> doing
> painstaking research, but I am anyway getting somewhere! :)
> Outstanding issues are here below, some are easy but I list them
> anyway to be informative
>
> # nitwit monsters are trying to shoot through walls!
> # sometimes, if there are too many trees on a level, there will be a
> crash :(
> # bootees of water-walking are not quite ready for action yet
> # it will be nice if I can have a more "cute" name for magic items, at
> present I have "amulet" (L1 magic), "circlet" (L2 magic), and
> "crown" (L3 magic), your suggestions are welcome :)
> # Important: Must find somewhere to upload the finished game! Is
> there some common-ground anywhere, or must I find own hosting?
> Typical, this only occurs to me now :)
Google Code and SourceForge both allow you to host open source
projects, as far as I know. Otherwise you can just get a basic
Geocities account to host small zip files.
--
Darren Grey
purple...@googlemail.com
Thank you, I had not heard about Google Code. So it will be
convenient, I shall upload there. What I meant in my question, was,
is it the case that any person has a "common ground" space where
copies of all 7DRL entries are placed? Since the entries probably are
quite small, this seems like it might be a possible thing.
purple...@googlemail.com
I have a candidate for release, which is at the address below. I will
leave off the announcement of success until tomorrow in case any
person is able to provide feedback. :)
http://chickhack.googlecode.com/files/chickhack-0.2.0.zip
It is a Commodore 64 disk image; you may find a useful emulator at,
for example, http://www.viceteam.org and please see the readme.txt in
the above ZIP file for notes on use.
By the way, you may thank Mr. Lait for it being C64. :) I was
inspired to create chickhack after reading this comment from him:
On Jan 31, 12:56 am, Jeff Lait <torespondisfut...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> It is quite acceptable to submit a binary that works only on a C64
> as your challenge entry.
So there! It shows nicely why one must be careful what one says
around here. :D
purple...@googlemail.com
I have completed the 7DRL challenge with Chickhack, a very "cheep"
roguelike.
It is a Commodore 64 disk image; you may find a useful emulator at,
for example, http://www.viceteam.org and please see the readme.txt in
the below ZIP file for notes on use.
You may download the disk image file here:
http://chickhack.googlecode.com/files/chickhack-1.0.0.zip
Please see http://chickhack.googlecode.com/ for updated downloads and
for known issues. Thanks :)
legend....@gmail.com
> It is a Commodore 64 disk image; you may find a useful emulator at,
> the below ZIP file for notes on use.
Only released for the C64? That seems very random. Can we get a
Windows port maybe?
Oh wait. I get it. You are trying to convert us over to the Commodore
side of the Force eh.
- Legend of Angband
http://legend-angband.blogspot.com/
purple...@googlemail.com
> On Mar 16, 1:56 pm, purplefla...@googlemail.com wrote:
>
> > It is a Commodore 64 disk image; you may find a useful emulator at,
> > the below ZIP file for notes on use.
>
> Only released for the C64? That seems very random. Can we get a
> Windows port maybe?
>
> Oh wait. I get it. You are trying to convert us over to the Commodore
> side of the Force eh.
>
> - Legend of Angband
> http://legend-angband.blogspot.com/
Jeff Lait said something in a conversation about source-code licences
before the challenge, "It is quite acceptable to submit a binary that
works only on a C64 as your challenge entry.". This was the word that
gave me a sudden idea, and so I created chickhack! :D
Another person has pointed out to me that, since C64 emulators are
available for so many systems, that in a strange way it is almost as
if its so unportable as to be very ported! :D If you would like to
play on Windows, you may find that winVICE is simple to obtain. I
look forward to seeing your thoughts on the game if so.
Probably it would be very simple to port to Windows completely. But I
do not wish to spoil the perfect match with Mr. Lait's comment! ;)
Darren Grey
> Hello,
>
> I have completed the 7DRL challenge with Chickhack, a very "cheep"
> roguelike.
>
> It is a Commodore 64 disk image; you may find a useful emulator at,
> the below ZIP file for notes on use.
>
> You may download the disk image file here:
>
> http://chickhack.googlecode.com/files/chickhack-1.0.0.zip
>
> for known issues. Thanks :)
Works very easily with x64 in the Vice package, though I found it best
to double speed and display size. A tough game, but irresistably
cute :) Reminds me of New Zealand Story.
--
Darren Grey
George Oliver
> Works very easily with x64 in the Vice package, though I found it best
> to double speed and display size. A tough game, but irresistably
> cute :) Reminds me of New Zealand Story.
Agreed, this is not only absolutely charming but I found the design
really interesting and evocative in the best roguelike fashion.
However, I didn't know you could double the speed! That will make the
game more 'modern', but perhaps subtract from the true C64 experience?
purple...@googlemail.com
Thank you both for the feedback! In part I was inspired by the
chickatrice storyline on Dudley's Dungeon some time ago, where a
chickatrice is playing a "game" of NetHack alongside Dudley's game.
A lot of the optimising I did was related to space rather than speed,
so that crashes do not happen when we run out of memory. For example,
the constant parts of the map data (the rooms) is not stored but just
recalculated when drawing a cell (the code only stores the locations
of corridors and any trees/water). The "one-way staircases" was
another offering for this; it means we may just throw away old map
data in any case. The unusual inventory system is also partly a
result of optimising for space. BTW, I had some small @-walking-on-
screen code done beforehand, but as other entrants had even curses
libraries and I don't, I guess it was OK (I even had to write some of
my own "curses" to make chickhack work!)
It is my hope that, in the future I may figure out how to load some
things from the disk as needed and possibly there improve space.
However, the speed will still be problem. As you say we can cheat and
increase speed (there is a "warp mode" option on VICE's x64 also!).
Thank you again for playing and your reports! Please let me know if
you manage to reach the Sacred Grove and what happens :)
Darren Grey
I found the level loading times and times between movement
instructions to be a bit frustrating at first, so I doubled the
speed. It still has that loading screen charm (though unfortunately
without the old C64 disk access noises), but it's a bit quicker, and
you don't feel impatient tapping the movement keys.
Wish I was a bit better at the game though - I guess some enemies are
just best avoided.
--
Darren Grey
Michael Dürwald
dungeon', but its not finished.
http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Abstract_Dungeons
Hopefully it will help someone...
Greetings
Michael
Darren Grey
> Thank you again for playing and your reports! Please let me know if
> you manage to reach the Sacred Grove and what happens :)
Finished! Once I figured out the AI patterns it was actually
extremely easy. The magic rose thing is especially overpowered, since
it can kill enemies that are stuck behind walls or around corners.
That's how I ended up killing the final boss.
Kwee the Chick
won the game on level 1
with a score of 2586
--
Darren Grey
rdc
Excellent article. Definitely gives me something to ponder.
--
Rick Clark
Clark Productions: http://rickclark58.googlepages.com/
Matthew Allen
> The first article i wrote, i think its a nice addon to 'grid based
> dungeon', but its not finished.
>
>
> Hopefully it will help someone...
>
> Greetings
> Michael
This is a very cool article. Thanks!
purple...@googlemail.com
Congratulations on the first win! I guess you are right, while the
"artificially stupid" AI does at least try to ambush around corners, a
magic rose or magic orchid makes all this change. Currently each
magic flower is: harder-hitting, longer-ranged, and can target more
victims per action than the lower flowers (and has more petals!). I
may make it so they all hit as hard, that way the bigger flowers will
be less overpowering. However I think that they will still be the
best way to kill elementals :)
I am planning a "fix" release once I can make tough monsters not be so
generated "out-of-depth", so you may look forward to this fix also.
One time i saw two panthers generated on level 1, that was a short-
lived test game :)
purple...@googlemail.com
"press space" message was misbehaving, monsters would get stuck on
corners, and some others.
You may download the disk image file here:
http://chickhack.googlecode.com/files/chickhack-1.1.2.zip