RogueRunner Development

Doxygen

I've decided that I will eventually make this game open source. I do a pretty good job of commenting in code, but I never comment my classe or method headers. So I'm now also in the process of adding Doxygen comments to all of my source files. What sucks is that it takes a VERY long time to add this amount of comments to this amount of code. Adding comments to files as I write them isn't that bad at all, so getting completely caught up now will be much better than finishing the game and then going back and commenting. Seeing how much work it has been already has convinced me that if I hadn't decided to get caught up now, I never would have had the time and patience to do it later.

Ultimately, open source serves 2 purposes as I see it. One, the user can see the inner workings of the system to assist in their own work. And two, people can actually help me hunt and destroy bugs. Before going beta I'll have a forum and bug reporting system in place. It's my hope that some form of community whether big or small will form around this game, and people can contribute.

Major overhaul

I haven't posted any updates for quite some time now, but not due to lack of working. In fact, I've been working heavily lately on making a complete overhaul of the display system. I've made the executive decision to switch over to colored ascii text instead of OpenGL graphics. Let me map out what infuluenced my decision.

OpenGL
Pros:
- Flexible sprite display. Easy to color, texture, rotate, scale, blend
- Not tied to the grid for things like projectiles, magic effects, etc.
- Better visually in general. More accessible to people outside the genre.

Cons:
- Heavier system requirements. ( Not big, I know, but with Roguelikes some people do care. )
- The need for sprites. This is the biggie. Every item and every monster and every floor tile and every wall tile needs a sprite to go with it. Well, I have about 50 sword sprites and only 6 or 7 axes. So, either there are just lots more swords in the game, or the axes will all look the same. I have entire races of monster sprites that I don't even know what I would use them for because of the way they look, but I don't have a certain set of monsters that I do want. If I want to add more sprites to the game, they not only have to be the right size, but they have to look like what I already have to some degree, otherwise they stick out like a sore thumb.

Which brings me to my final point - ascii is even more flexible, in some areas:

ASCII
Pros:
- Complete flexibilty in what gets added to the game. Whatever combination of letter and color I want can represent whatever I want it to. Then I just add some good descriptive text to everything, and it's up to the user to use their imagination.
- Traditionally Roguelikes are in ascii. It goes with the genre.
- Very light weight and fast. The screen updates as fast as you can send in key commands to it.

Cons:
- Not as pretty/accessible.
- Tied to the grid for projectiles and effects.

So I've spent the past month gutting the system of all OpenGL stuff and re-implementing the display system to use win32 text commands. I'm actually mostly done with that stuff, probably just needs some tweaking as time goes on.

Dwarf Fortress

So I've been spending a lot of time playing Dwarf Fortress. Apparently it has an adventure mode that is Roguelike, but the main game itself really has nothing to do with Roguelikes. It just makes use of entirely ascii graphics. Nevertheless, it's an incredibly complex and addicting game. I highly reccomend checking it out. It does, however, have a few drawbacks. First, the learning curve is EXTREME! You'll have to read a bit just to get started, and have a browser open to the wiki to be looking up things as you play. I've been playing quite a bit for a couple weeks, and I still don't have a really good feel for certain parts of the game. The other thing I get annoyed with is the interface. Using a graphical interface could simplify the game in so many ways. I really want RogueRunner to make the best use of the mouse and grahpics, to make the game easier to learn and use.