Hack Saga

Hey everyone - once it's approved, the second demo will be available for your viewing pleasure.

This was a lot of work, even though it won't seem like a huge change from the previous demo. Even with highly reduced item/world interaction, roguelikes are a lot of work. I certainly have a better understanding of how someone who's seemingly half-finished a roguelike can give up on it. I was surprised at just how many minor bugs presented themselves as I played around with the stats of monsters, even. I had forgotten to set the hp of monsters when loading them, I had forgotten to make the boss spawn in a reachable place, on and on.

Some of the features in this demo: Monsters now level up as you progress in the dungeon. Not only that, but As you progress more monsters are added to the roster, and they earn new skills as they level. The most annoying enemy will have to be the Insane Cultist, with the power to teleport you randomly. Also, watch out for Ghost of Starman, and Cap'n Strong - their turns come 50% faster.

As for you, you have a decision to make at the beginning of the game: higher defense, or a weapon. You won't be able to afford PSI Healing alpha for a while, but it should definately be your first artifact purchase.

Your game will save automatically upon closing the game. you can walk out of the town to leave it. it the / or ? button for a command list.



Some problems: I haven't updated the AI of the monsters in a very long time aside from patchwork. As such, there are some exploitable behaviors. for instsnce, monsters won't walk around each other. Also, once you beat on a monster enough, he'll get scared and run away... into a wall. and stay there. waiting for you to massacre it.

Also, admittidly, I've very bad at balancing stats. Right now, the player and the monsters have the very same level up algorithm... Which makes their HP sky rocket. Even the monsters with pathetic HP at the start will grow at a high rate.

Finally, I still have some work do to on intergrating stats. eventually, a higher speed stat will affect your turn speed. Also, the amount of money you have by the end of the game is absurd, while the amount you get at the beginning is painfully low. Sadly, the enemies don't drop items yet, but to compensate, you don't have to pick up money - you do that automatically.

Right now I'm working on some issues I discovered in some of my resent changes. Namely, Dungeons not leveling up their enemies like they should be. I've already identified the problem, but a nice solution eludes me. The problem is, I've mostly assumed that my dungeons are going to down downwards - but what if i want some kind of tower? I don't want to be too lazy and just pretend that going down is actually going up. One solution is to not assume any direction and make up or down transitions between floors merely cosmetic - but then this introduces a second problem. The way I scale the monster difficulty is directly proportional to the "depth" or level of the dungeons themselves. Then there's the whole issue of having the game remember which particular dungeon I'm in when traversing a multi-level dungeon, and then realising when I'm NOT in a dungeon when I leave.

Dungeon crawlers that pretty much have you in only one dungeon don't really have this problem, but I really like the variety involved in wandering from town to dungeon.

Really, once I'm finished and all the features are included, what I'm trying to make is a video game-themed rpg with some roguelike elements. I'm really looking forward to crushing myself under the yoke of trying to make a random npc talk generator that doesn't spout gobbledygook. I may give up on that and just try to come up with tons of lines chosen at semi-random - but I'd like to give it the ol college try anyway.

The amusement continues.

Sorry for the VP reference - i'm just kinda excited about this point in the game's development.

Finally, I started adding status effects. It's really fun. I can't wait to see the horrible things I'm going to do to everyone with them.

These are the ones I've come up with so far - I encourage you to give me some other ideas for status effects, I might just put some in. (PS: Yes yes, they mostly come from FFXII, but those were some awesome status effects!)

Poison, Oil, Slow, Sleep, Paralyze, Stone, Confuse, Blind, Berserk, Tiny, Frog, Death, Doom, Disease, Silence, Zombie, Freeze, Insane, Regen, Haste, Bubble, Protect, Shell, Reverse, Decoy, Autolife.

To those who haven't played FFXII, the only ones you'll be needing explained are:

Oil - fire based attacks do shit-tons of damage
Disease - whenever you are attacked, your maximum hp goes down instead which makes curing impossible.
Insane - actually I hope to mimic Ragnarok's insane status. god I wish I knew the algorithm they used.
Freeze - this I'm stealing from RO - paralyze the victim and make them vulnerable to thunder based attacks.
Bubble - positive status - doubles your max hp.
Reverse - all attacks cure you, all things that cure you will hurt you.
Decoy - enemies only attack you

As most of you who play video games would have noticed by now, all the enemies are Earthbound-related. For those who don't, It's an SNES-Era rpg.

Anyway, Even though I'm going to have many themed dungeons, the first one I'm trying to develop is full of earthbound enemies. I've made it so the enemy's level progresses with the floors, and that they will receive new skills when reaching new levels. Each enemy also has a "hardness" indicator so my game knows when they should be appearing in a dungeon, and how often. (it doesn't do anything yet, but soon)

I'll have to tweak how much enemies give for exp, because it takes 25 kills at level 1 to go to level 2. just seems a little long to me...

I also tweaked my menu's slightly, fiddled with my town algorithms, added new art, and some new enemies. I've got Capt. Strong, Runaway Dog, Coil Snake, Spiteful Crow, Smelly Ghost, and a zombie. I uploaded some pics of my new town signs.

So far, there aren't any status effects, or stealing, or even teleportation, but trust me it's on the list. I can't wait until I implement the Marlboro's - MUA HAHAHA.

Anyway, I'll keep on postin'

Well, after hours of mind numbing contemplation, I develloped a system of stat growth I can be happy with. Basically, I mapped out a long skill progression table that goes from 1 to 99. Depending on your starting stat, by the time you reach level 99, any particular stat could be from anywhere beteen 50 and 99.

For example, if you started the journey with a strength of 1 - by the time you were level 50 your strength would be an abysmal 15. So basically my game will punish you for ignoring stats when you make a character.

I did it this way because in my tables, all my monsters start at level 1, and will level up according to their location in the game. Sadly, no randomness involved with stats, but HP and MP will be slightly random I think. If I want, I can add a slight randomness to monster stats later.