Denial

I was messing around with VICE's PET emulator recently and was looking at the roguelike game, DUNGEON - after thinking about what I liked and disliked about the game, inspiration hit me to create something similar for the unexpanded VIC. A couple of hours on the VIC and the first WIP version of Serpents Caves was born. I decided to go with the monohrome green on black look to give it that extra retro feel. Here my first early release for anyone who wants to look at it and provide any feedback.... The player can move around using the cursor keys - The 'Fog-Of-War' feature is working to gradually display the level..... No A.I. as yet for the serpents or collision detection (except for the walls of the level to prevent the game crashing)

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Download Here:-http://www.mediafire.com/download/oho7h ... t/serp.prg

Excellent - nice draft! Go on with it!

ravenxau wrote:I decided to go with the monochrome green on black look to give it that extra retro feel. Here my first early release for anyone who wants to look at it and provide any feedback....

Thanks for this, Ravenxau, from a monochrome display user .

This is going to be awesome! The unexpanded VIC needs more roguelikes and mini-RPGs. The only feedback I can offer is that it is hard to tell where I've already explored since the unexplored characters look exactly like the explored open characters. Maybe you could make the explored open characters periods.

Other then that, I hope you see it through. Good luck!

Done some more work. Improvements as follows

- Using periods to show explored areas

- Snake A.I. is now working

- Diamonds can be collected for score

- Snakes will swallow any diamonds they touch

- Contact with a snake will reduce hit points by 1

- Hit points will increase to simulate rest/healing

- Multiple snakes can occupy the same space and the split in separate directions



The Game now is functional as a One Level Demo - Download for the latest version is linked in the opening post.

After a couple more hours coding the game is finished and ready for full play

Things added:-

- Title/Success/Failure screens

- The player is awarded an extra hit point to their maximum for completing a cave

- A random hissing sound effect for atmosphere

- 15 random levels to complete a quest

- 1 extra snake is added at the start of every new level



One thing I did realize when thinking about the level generation routine is that there is a small chance of a cave having an exit that is unreachable - as this is highly unlikely, I decided to leave this in as a 'feature' to simulate the dangers of adventuring.

I hope anybody that plays this enjoys it, as you can never have too many rougelikes to play.

All feedback and suggestions for improvements are welcome

Again, The opening post has the download for the latest version.

Edit:- Here is a slightly modified version for emulators without 4 separate cursor keys or for play on a real VIC 20 - also the hit point advancement has been halved to ramp up the difficulty on the later levels.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/tkzmx ... rpkeys.prg

Excellent beta! I like the way it plays.
1816 bytes free... room for user defined characters?

orion70 wrote:Excellent beta! I like the way it plays.
1816 bytes free... room for user defined characters?

I made an attempt to add UDG's - but the program has become an absolute mess with me trying to patch things together - so I intend to do a full re-write from scratch over the weekend.


EDIT:- Have started the re-write - UDG's are now functional - here is a WIP Screenshot of a partially explored cave:-

THANK YOU !

The re-write continues - here is a screenie of the color scheme I'm thinking of going with - any thoughts???

done some more coding on the game - here is a .tap file for testing.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/lwwj7 ... 6/serp.tap

What about a start menu with cycling color schemes, much in the way of Sword of Fargoal?

small update:- Serpent damage increases as the levels increase - A level 15 serpent will do 4 points of damage - should be interesting when there are 20 serpents to avoid while searching for the exit.

Ramping difficulty rate eh?

I can't seem to get the TAP file to work in VICE. This is what I'm getting:
I'm not quite sure what the problem is .

Same here
Tried also with LOAD"",1,1 and various RAM expansions, but no luck.