Release Gravedigger

[erico]

Great info, a bit low level for me but I can fish a few things out of it!
Took a little while to do the bounce back system, needs a few things more and polish.

 

[ible]

super tense! looks very enjoyable.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

We must stop the zombiphobia !
This game has to be banned !

 

[erico]

But but... it is just a dead mans party, who could ask for more? The shovel is made of ballons. No violence involved.

 

[gunrock]

@erico I love what you have done here. Taking inspiration from an old type-in (I loved and hated these in equal measure) and made something new.

Looks fun.

 

[erico]

Thanks, it should be completed very soon!
Here is some stress test on the map generator, it does fail some 5% of the time, but it works fine in detecting it and re generating another.

Looks like when you hold the atari 2600 reset switch with some map based games

The ones that fail hang a bit longer, usually the flood fill(yellow) got to the corner of the screen, if not, then the area available is so small the computer could not place all 10 tombs.
Very rarely it fails because of player or key placement.

 

[erico]

More dev happened, it takes a lot of time to balance a rogue likes, feels like an impossible task to complete, a lot more than an action game I suspect.

Added a set of treasures to instigate the player to keep around for a while.
Added a kind of time limit as the level slowly collapses after 60 turns, should instigate the player to get to the choppa.

The treasures, of course, have to be the classic Pitfall ones but the bag of money, which I changed to a few coins, too low resolution for a $ sign.
And then, when the... wait! What did that zombie just dropped?

 

[erico]

Here is a game run, I´m getting close to have the gameplay neat for new or advanced players.

 

[erico]

The melt down in game sure brings momentum, should be very tense!
Got inspiration from this game here that I used to play a lot.

 

[levi]

I love the music. Did you write it yourself, or did you select it from a free site? Even if the latter, it's a good selection. I enjoyed you bowling the zombies, but I can't help feeling the gameplay ended up a little slow. Maybe also highlighting the exit tile would help because otherwise even when watching in a leisurely manner I can't immediately see what you're aiming at.

 

[erico]

I got the music from free sites, got 3 of them from the same author same mood, 1 is split into 2 loops in game.
The game has 5 music, 3 in game. I love it, it is just quite realistic, not as chiptune as one would expect from the visuals.

About the game being slow, it is something I´m still working on, will fasten up some parts.
About the exit, there will be a gfx re-check and sound too as soon as I get the gameplay in tune.
It seems to be, I also fixed one of the last 2 bugs.

 

[erico]

Dammit! I think I saw this coming.

 

[erico]

Finished with the game play, so am working to polish stuff.
Here is WIP on the new looks. I also want all possible 18 zombies to be unique.

 

[Eight Bit]

It looks fun

 

[erico]

Made all zombies and worked a bit their animation, too jumpy.
It still is a little though.

Did some base 3 color shade on the zombies to try a bit more solid looks, maybe it helps with people understanding it a rogue like game.
Here is an OVERDONE testing, a little too dark.

Post automatically merged: Oct 29, 2019

Here is another showing the stages, not final though, just testing, but I will end up adding some level of shade to the thing.

 

[levi]

I'm oldschool, so for me the indicator of a roguelike is that everything's presented in 7-bit ascii. It seems to me that the only thing specifically rogue-like about gravedigger is that it's turn based, and I'm fine with a game being grid-based and turn-like without it having to become a roguelike personally.

 

[erico]

Yep, roguelike is def a bad term here, grid and turn based are the correct ones as you stated.
Still, I get alot of people juggling controls when playing this and trying again does not get better quick enough.
I could add tutorials, board-like or huds into it to help, like Advanced wars type overlay, but I wanted to keep the game area clean of these all.

Can´t use sound for that as it will get annoyingly repetitive, and I already use one to mark the moment the player gets ready for his turn.
I still suspect the controls could be improved to help that but can´t wrap my head around it.

I do want the game done this week though, so it will probably stay this way.

 

[Eight Bit]

Why not make a themed instruction page with a few pointers at each start-up you can click away to actually start the game.
What's the aim of the game btw? Damage all the graves and don't get touched by a zombie?

 

[erico]

Damage graves to invoke treasures, collect em up, get the key to open the gate, possibly get some of the 3 cognacs that can appear and escape as close to 60 turns as you can.
It is not obvious and a bit weird as I featured creeped the original idea. Still, there isn´t much game content so I feel like not want to "spoil" it.

I was going to keep game A and B but A is not worth keeping so it will have to go. I could change that into a tutorial but might be confusing, better just one game.
I think I will add instructions on the game page covering the controls and a bit of the objectives.

 

[erico]

"Wasting" time with the gfx of the intro, outro and game over bits, like there was never a deadline...