Snapshot Roguelike alpha

[Omnivore]

Pretty early alpha (0.0.3) but playable. F1 for ingame help (not the best looking but functional), Esc to exit. Rotational view, character always facing towards the top of the screen, view centered just above the hud for a simple field of awareness visual display. Up next will be modern day and some futuristic weapons, more items, more monsters, another infinite dungeon generator. Eventually intend to merge this with the early Dark Stars RL project for a cross between ascii sector and DoomRL. Although it is currently an ascii display, the ascii symbols are placeholders for tiles and sprites, basically just need compatible artwork.

GPLv3 license, full source up on bitbucket (Love 0.8.x compatible), love file and windows exe distributable up as well.
https://bitbucket.org/blprice61/snapshot/overview

Screenshot:


Looking forward to hearing what you think of it,
Omnivore

[Davidobot]

Wow, very well done. I especially like that you can turn your character, didn't see that in any Rogue-likes. Good innovation!

[ArchAngel075]

A couple of questions for this greate start! :
(Note i understand its pretty early, but i love knowing as much as i can about a project makes my itching for its completion nastier!)

1. by saying you need artwork that is just compatible, do you mean that changing the code to use new artwork(say larger tile images) would infact be really easy?
2. Also would you say anything about custom user texture support in future.
3. Do you see multiplayer support in future
4. Do you see some form of user editing-like features, such as items and "systems" in the future. say for instance one wishes to add their own form of HP or a thirst system and whatnot.
5. Do you have any planned storylines, and if so can you share any if possible
6. What are your inspirations, ie : the classic dwarfFortress, darkDaysAhead etc.
7. how many are working on this, and are you willing to have others join in development.
8. are you accepting names (if yes, do you have guidelines due to genre or storyline etc?)

Wow, thats the most ive ever asked!
Again remember that these questions are just to see how much of an itching we can build up! *cause im already using the nearest spike
I apologize if you feel im asking big questions at such a early stage.

*not really

[Omnivore]

1. by saying you need artwork that is just compatible, do you mean that changing the code to use new artwork(say larger tile images) would infact be really easy?
2. Also would you say anything about custom user texture support in future.
3. Do you see multiplayer support in future
4. Do you see some form of user editing-like features, such as items and "systems" in the future. say for instance one wishes to add their own form of HP or a thirst system and whatnot.
5. Do you have any planned storylines, and if so can you share any if possible
6. What are your inspirations, ie : the classic dwarfFortress, darkDaysAhead etc.
7. how many are working on this, and are you willing to have others join in development.
8. are you accepting names (if yes, do you have guidelines due to genre or storyline etc?)

Ok, wow, lets see, as to 1. and partially 2, - while the map and mob/avatar symbols in the game are text symbols, they are taken from a texture made from a bitmap font image. The code involved will handle any reasonably sized texture image as long as it is square and divisible by 16, preferably power of 2 in size. Thus tiles of 32x32 pixels could easily be accommodated. Further, the architecture is such that at least four separate texture maps could be used without much work. Each tile in the system is comprised of two glyphs, each sprite has one glyph, each glyph is equivalent to a 16x16 tile with the current settings. It would be fairly simple to have separate texture maps for foreground and background on the map, and hardly any effort at all to use one texture map for mobiles and another for items.

Now, before going any further, realize that I've designed Snapshot to reach at least DoomRL capabilities artistically, but only in a top down manner. The use of a rotating map means isometric would be, I believe, rather difficult to implement. Certainly not simple given the current code.

Now for the rest of 2. as well as 4. - the game is GPLv3 licensed so it is fully open source. Anyone could author and distribute a fork or patch, and I do intend at some point to make it easy to create plugins for, at the very least, AI and quest/missions.

For 3. - no, multiplayer in the traditional sense is not intended. I've seen numerous attempts over the years to do multiplayer roguelikes and I've never been satisfied with even the best efforts. However, I would like to investigate and explore other forms of social interaction through sharing various game resources - perhaps someday setting up a 'bones' server and if someone with the necessary talent shows up to do something along the lines of genetic algorithm AI or neural network or other learning AI, I would definitely like to have an automated community exchange of 'educated' AIs.

I'll take 5 and 6 together; the theme is science fiction but concentrating on the ground side rather than space. I envision a cross between GDW's 2300AD setting and GURPS Transhuman Space - if you're familiar with those table top RPG game systems. I have prototyped a space scene, (the Dark Stars RL project) including roguelike ship interior maps but if included it will serve mainly as a cut-scene or RPG plot element rather than a center point of the game. I definitely plan to include outdoor scenes in addition to underground, including urban as well as wilderness settings. A cross between ADOM, DoomRL, and Ascii-Sector if you will. Also I was rather impressed, and had a lot of fun with, Anarchy Online's classic mission system with its seemingly randomly generated content.

As far as storylines go, I'd prefer to have a good set of dynamic, flexible, short stories, within a larger sandbox. That said, I draw the line at trying to create a crossover into 4x games or similar overreaching goals. Something along the lines of the various Traveller adventure modules, the overall campaign was (or could be) a sandbox, but there were plenty of opportunities for plot immersion to avoid feeling like you were wandering aimlessly. I haven't yet settled on a 'main arc' but in general am looking for something gritty rather than superheroic.

Finally addressing points 7. and 8. Currently there are three people involved; namely me, myself, and I. I'm an older man in poor health, medically retired, so I have a fair bit of time to invest, just sometimes not feeling up to it. I do have some friends who may be willing to pitch in as real life permits at some point, including one game industry professional, most all of them fellow programmers - if nothing else a good last resort for thorny problems and solid advice. Honestly I'm difficult to work with, I have a tendency to be rather opinionated and stubborn with a side of OCD. Still, I'm not about to turn down willing and able assistance, so if you or anyone else reading this is interested in getting involved in the project, drop me a PM and we'll go from there.

Thanks for your interest and enthusiasm
Omnivore

[Germanunkol]

Very nice!

Really well done, plays very nicely.
Could you move the F1 Help screen to the right though? Otherwise it overlaps with the inventory, which is annyoing at the beginning.

[Omnivore]

Very nice!
Really well done, plays very nicely.
Could you move the F1 Help screen to the right though? Otherwise it overlaps with the inventory, which is annyoing at the beginning.

Thanks, and good point. The current F1 help screen is a dirty kludge to be perfectly honest, just found I had added in too many keys commands to easily explain or rely upon user experimentation. I'll make a note to move it over to the right side as I clean it up and at least get descriptions and keys in separate columns

Omnivore

[raidho36]

That's really cool thing (as I already said), I totally like it, although for user interface I'd rather went with monospaced font, but that's a matter of taste.

[ArchAngel075]

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-snip-

holy good stuff! Thanks for the great feed back and im thoroughly impressed! Do expect long term support from me, i allways loved rouge-likes, especially ones like this

I look forward to seeing this grow!
(I was suprised by your reply regarding multiplayer, neat idea!)

[Omnivore]

That's really cool thing (as I already said), I totally like it, although for user interface I'd rather went with monospaced font, but that's a matter of taste.

Thanks, any particular font family you would recommend? I have no artistic taste lol so I'll gladly try out recommendations.

[raidho36]

I use ubuntu-mono, I just like the way it looks. Though I like better Terminus font, but it doesn't work well with my software for some reason (fails to display unicode characters often although it claims to be capable of, but most common characters are displayed fine), and it's a bitmap font so it naturally have fine pixellated look, on the other hand you should choose font sizes carefully since different sizes have very different features.