Fourth Age screen shots

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

hmm no, and won't.. I remember some old castle exploring game (not a roguelike I think just the way that ancient game was) and I'm not looking forward to playing that.. (seriously, graphs aren't everything but playing a doom game with symbols when there there is the newest version in which there are nice graphs seems masochistic to me.) anyway.. my point was that dom 3 has graphs and he might be allowed to use them, if so he should IMHO (if they are usuable for his game at all no clue there though)

My point was that symbols are better than bad graphics. Fourth Age won't have Doom 3-quality graphics, and it can't use Dom3 sprites as more than placeholders because the era and equipment is too different.
With ASCII, it can be as simple as 'G' is a guard, different colors are ranks. If you've seen only red 'G's and suddenly bunch of darker red and orange come your way, you'll know something's up. And then you press 'l'ook, and you see that those are Men at Arms and elite guards. GGGGGGGG Then you go to Ulm, and find normal guards, Guardians and Ghoul Guardians. GGGGGGGG
Imagine how long it would take to do good sprites for just basic guards for all the nations.


As for why anyone would want to play DoomRL instead of DOOM 3: they are different games. DoomRL is turn-based and mostly a tactical game, the gameplay is nothing like DOOM.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=682ONClEFMg

[Aezeal]

seems like I won't be able to convince you all... well I'll admit if the story and gameplay are very very good there are possibilities.. but they'd have to be Baldurs gate like quality or else some pplz (me) might rather play BG..

Still can't wait for a sample to play.. screens don't mean much to me (especially if it's only symbols ) and then I might be convinced.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

seems like I won't be able to convince you all... well I'll admit if the story and gameplay are very very good there are possibilities.. but they'd have to be Baldurs gate like quality or else some pplz (me) might rather play BG..

I'm not sure what you're trying to convince us about. I'd like to have good-looking graphics for Fourth Age, but good sprites take lots of time. Because of that, Fourth Age probably won't have good sprites, at least for a while. I hope you can agree with this part, at least.

I think this leaves only two choices: symbols, or sprites that aren't accurate (e.g. "those halberds are really muskets", or "that inquisitor is really a shopkeeper"). I don't think there are other feasible options which require so little extra work.

From those two choices, IMO symbols are a much better choice for a project like Fourth Age. I think this is the only thing where we disagree, but since you said you don't want to even try good games that use ASCII symbols instead of sprites, it's quite a disagreement.


P.S. There aren't enough symbols to represent every nation, so eventually it might be necessary to start using sprites. However, that's way to the future of this project (when it's important to know who's the flying Caelian and who's the true-blooded Abysian who can make your spear catch fire). There might even be ways around that, but at that point sprites would probably be a better option.

[Aezeal]

Wellll.. if you don't mind symbols anyway you could model troops by using more than one symbol of course... a symbol for race, a symbol for type (of something) and a symbol indicating armor/weapons (maybe it's power in 5 degrees) since at a glance you probably can't see wether the enemy is wielding a used or somewhat used halbard but you MIGHT see the difference between a nearly broken one and a heavily enchanted one.

But maybe that is already in your minds since I have no clue about this sort of thing and it might just be annoying

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on 1 you could do a symbol indicating race (and different colors for)

on 2 you could do armor type (color indicating quality)

on 4 weapon type (color indicating quality)

and on 3 something else that is probably usefull but I'm not thinking of.

or just different symbols on the 4 places and color indicating race (so they seem to fit together better and not like a clown with 4 different symbols in 4 different colors.)

well probably not a good/usefull idea anyway but just what I was thinking of without knowing anything of the genre.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

or just different symbols on the 4 places and color indicating race (so they seem to fit together better and not like a clown with 4 different symbols in 4 different colors.)

well probably not a good/usefull idea anyway but just what I was thinking of without knowing anything of the genre.

Actually, I had a similar idea about representing the unit's nation/allegiance/race with a two-color circle (if the circle below the 'h' isn't just a placeholder).

The problem with this is that it gets harder to understand, and that at that point sprites would be better any way. Good sprites make it easy to tell undead apart from living troops, and different weapons from each other, and the difference between heavy and light armor and various shields.

[Aezeal]

another option (I'm not into that ascii thing I think you said he's using) might be different color backgrounds behind the symbol. that color would be most obvious and thus could represent the most obvious thing about a unit.. I'm not sure what would be most obvious though.. race or general weaponry (heavy cavalry/infantry will probably first be noted for being just that... though huge giants will probably be seen for it's race first..
as would undead.. unless they where in heavy armor since you'd not see the bones untill you smashed the armor..

in your first example you used G for guards.. OFTEN the class of a unit is clear through its armor so I'd not use both.. if a wizard is wearing heavy armor he'd probably surprise you by casting spells "IRL" too.

So I'd use a block of color for general appearance. grey = soldier, purple and red = wizard, yellow = noble, brown = peasant etc with differences in that color indicating it's relative power (light grey = light infantry, dark gray = heavy infantry, light brown peasant in regular clothes, dark brown a person in leather armor) the symbol could then indicate race or something, and the color of the letter something else ..

If you could draw a thin line around a box or just a stripe on it's 2 sides that could indicate casting of a spell..

hmm brainstorming is nice but it'd be better to see what the creator is acutally doing.. all these thoughts are probably wasted since he has a plan anyway and I can't program this for myself

[Omnirizon]

updated screen shots.

i'm now working on a system that creates and adds NPC objects into the game. In the way I code everything, no functions/objects that are part of an actively blitted screen contain their own while loops. their functions only contain the procedure for one frame. thus:

unitgroup = VPR.units()
map = VPR.map()
while 1:
    mousepos = get_mouse()
    VPR.drawscreen(mousepos)

units and the map are initialized. then a while loop is started containing the procedure for drawing one frame. Is this efficient? I'm not sure but it makes it easy to add stuff. I will write an object to create random monsters/NPCs and stuff and add it in:

unitgroup = VPR.units()
map = VPR.map()
monsters = monstermaker()
while 1:
    mousepos = get_mouse()
    monsters.make()
    VPR.drawscreen(mousepos)

each frame the game checks to see if it should add another monster to the map. A screen display can be added this way too. since the screen display will take space from the mouse-clickable area of the map, it will also modify the mousepos.

unitgroup = VPR.units()
map = VPR.map()
monsters = monstermaker()
HUD = display()
while 1:
    mousepos = HUD.display()
    monsters.make()
    VPR.drawscreen(mousepos)

so that's whats up next. NPC/monster maker and a HUD display. that will inch closer towards a playable game.

EDIT: sourcecode also added to OP for those who are interested. It really isn't commented yet, and I can't promise it is all very pretty... well, everything but the items.py stuff I think is ok. the function that builds the items object by parsing out the items hash tables is kind of ugly. also, i've never had formal coding instruction, i'm completely autodidactic; so I can't promise that my stuff is done to convention or up to those standards, but I try my best.

lastly, I use a ton of typechecking to do all my hash table functions. this gave some of the people in the #python IRC channel fits, but for my purposes I think it is completely justified: to have completely flexible table shapes I had to know ahead of time what kind of data was in the table. most python people I talked to didn't like this and said I should instead know the shape ahead of time. however since the shape of the table is the shape of bodies, this just isn't possible. I could however rewrite some of the stuff to do some broader typechecking though. I could also just not use hash tables, and this was another suggestion from those in #python, however I think it makes adding stuff easier.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

in your first example you used G for guards.. OFTEN the class of a unit is clear through its armor so I'd not use both.. if a wizard is wearing heavy armor he'd probably surprise you by casting spells "IRL" too.

This is actually a rather nifty idea. It might even translate into sprites where putting on a different armor changes the sprite itself, since I think the graphics system allows stacking things on top of each other.


Nice to see the new screens, Omnirizon. It looks like the sphere below the 'h' isn't intended to be just a placeholder.

[Omnirizon]

well, the sphere should be entirely functional as the unit image. however, its existence doesn't rule out the possibility of sprites in the future; in that sense it is a placeholder. at any rate, nothing about the way it is implemented makes it a necessity; it is literally about 15 lines of code. but as people have said and i know from my own (failed) attempts, making sprites is really freaking hard.

also, i want the images to reflect the size of the units. simple circles do that well enough. I guess any sprite could do that too; it isn't anything to transform the scale of an image after all.

since this is a roguelike, there's always more focus on the mechanics than the graphics. that's what it's all about after all... just think about 95% of big name titles, they have tons of lens flare but no innovative game systems that add mechanics without cluttering up the interface. it takes a small Asian nation to make even simple graphics for modern games, and after that's done no one takes time to flesh out good systems (or the game systems are too intimately tied to the graphics and there's really no option to even develop them...). People demand all surface and no depth, and that's what they get. Reviewers like Yahtzee and his Zero Punctuation make a career out of that fact.

[Aezeal]

Well as I said I always prefer a good story and system above graphics (I'm playing dom 3 which should say enough) but I thought sprites could be nice.. of course it's extra work and I know you shouldn't start with it untill later after the most important things are done. (but the fact you have placeholders, so I assume you can somehat easily replace it once you have sprites, sounds great) Anyway IF you can use some spere (which could already more functional than just ascii signs I guess,) to remain behind the symbol you MIGHT be able to use the general outline of a creature too (small humanoid (goblin), humanoid (human, orc), large humanoid (troll, ogre) cavalry (for cavalry) and something for huger creatures (and maybe a special dragon one for the dragon endboss (ok ignore me if you want ). nothing fancy but the general size and outline will give lots of information and you'd only need like 6 outlines (simple sprites) to cover most encounters in the world, (I'm sure someone here could make soem very functional ones), you could then just use a color for whatever you use the color now (or as I suggested before) and one or more symbols inside it

I was wondering will your game be GB like in it's story, with loads of quests and sidequests (which means loads of text you'll have to write, or more daggerfall like with a lot of general phrases while raoming the lands and searching for loor and maybe some generic quests which can be repeated with generated targets etc and only a main quest which is entirely handwritten or something else entirely. (of course BG is great, but daggerfall's model with all random stuff might be easier for you... you'd probably need half a small asian country to write BG like text for the whole game)

I must say you are a little harsh in you comments about modern game though, there are plenty of nice ones out there. Personally I do like Oblivion and Fallout 3 a lot.

anyway about what I started with.. I just love to brainstorm and really like the idea of this project.. but I can't programm anything and have no idea about what you will do.. so if I'm way off and this is not usefull at all just stop me in that track (stopping me completely will be harder ).