The boulders are falling and rolling, the gems can be picked up and you can die crushed to death.

I’m a little late, but I’m in again, with a relatively uninspired Boulder Dash clone in my plans. I will see where I can take that idea further.

For the 28th Ludum Dare contest, I made a game titled Fujo about a temple
maiden kidnapped by monsters, who has to fight her way back to the surface.
This article is documenting my decisions and the design process, and reviewing
what went well and what went wrong. I hope that it will prove useful not only
to me.

The Idea

I knew from the start that I wanted to make a game inspired by the immortal
classic game Rogue. I wanted it to be a dungeon exploration game, with tactical
combat and resource and risk management. From my previous attempts at making
such games, I had some idea what makes them tick:

• procedurally generated levels,
• random loot distribution,
• food clock,
• item identification,
• at least two ways of using every item, some good and some harmful.

That is all that I knew before the theme has been announced. I also had a rough
plan for the overall architecture of the code — again based on my precious
attempts.

The Roadmap

I didn’t really have a very detailed plan, but I knew what needs to be done,
and which parts depend on each other. One thing that I considered important was
to have a menu system relatively early in the game — I knew that it will make
adding a lot of features easier later. In the end, the roadmap looked something
like this:

• blank screen,
• empty level displayed with graphical tiles,
• predefined level displayed with tiles, proper tiling of the walls,
• a data structure for the level,
• level generator,
• displaying message windows,
• displaying menus,
• a player character sprite,
• moving around the map, in jumps,
• proper graphics for the level,
• monster sprites, predefined monsters,
• sprites properly obstructed by walls,
• sprite animation,
• shadows,
• randomly placed monsters,
• attacking monsters by walking into them,
• monsters walking around randomly,`
• monsters attacking,
• the sleeping/angry states for the monsters,
• object sprites, such as bushes and ladders,
• item sprites, randomly placed items,
• numbers and messages floating above monsters,
• item pickup animation,
• player character and monster stats,
• displaying of player character stats,
• player character inventory,
• varying item kinds,
• displaying of player inventory,
• using items (food),
• equipping items,
• item stats, different item kinds,
• actual combat mechanics,
• metabolism (food, death),
• item throwing and discarding,
• spells and spell effects,
• level generation adjusted by depth,
• boss level,
• title screen.

Tiles

For the wall tiles, I used a clever trick that I have learned recently. The
thing is, if you just use normal tiles, with all combinations of all possible
bends and corners, you end up with a very large number of tiles to draw, and
quite a complex algorithm for choosing which one to draw. But if you instead
shift your wall tiles by half a tile down and right, so that every wall tile is
actually at the connection of the floor tiles, then you suddenly only need a
few different tiles and a very simple algorithm for placing them. The price you
pay for it is that it’s now hard to have different kinds of walls, but
fortunately I didn’t need it here.

Graphics

I initially used the graphics from my previous games and demos, just to see if
my ideas have any legs. I then went and re-drawn all of them, both to make them
fit better and to comply with Ludum Dare rules. This really let me concentrate
on having a working game first, and to work on the graphics as I had time.

Level Generator

I wasn’t very creative with this one. I used the algorithm that I described in
an article at Rogue Basin some time ago.
I just had to tweak it a little to fit the dimensions of my map, and to keep a
list of empty tiles, so that I can place stuff on them later.

Menus

Creating a menu display system early on really paid. Thanks to it I could
easily implement the inventory, and later add different actions for the items.

Throwing

All items can either be used/equipped, or thrown at the monsters. That means
that you always have an option, and that there are no useless items. Even the
spells that have a bad effect can be thrown at the monster to your advantage.
Not to mention all the extra weapons that you find. One thing that I didn’t
have time to implement is the throwing animation — I just show when a monster
has been hit.

What is missing

I didn’t have time to make everything. There is no sound or music. Joanna
Piechowiak composed original music for it, and it’s included in the post-compo
version, but I couldn’t come up with anything by myself during the competition.
There are only two kinds of monsters, a normal one and a boss, which really
makes all those different kinds of weapons pretty useless — you just want the
strongest one. There is no “fog of war” — I added it in the post-compo
version, and it makes the exploration of the level much more interesting in my
opinion. There are no traps or hidden passages, even though I initially wanted
to have them. There are no status effects for the player character — I would
really need these if I wanted different monsters with special attacks, but
since there is only one monster, it somehow works. No magical equipment too —
amulets just increase your defense. It would be nice to have them grant
invulnerabilities or other bonuses than defense. And of course you can keep
adding stuff to a roguelike game and never stop.

Play and rate it.

So I added lots of new items: weapons, amulets, spells, food, etc. And they all have effects both on you (when you use them) and on monsters (when you throw them). There is a very basic intro screen, and no proper death/victory handling, because I honestly don’t want to break a working game just to add them at the last moment. There is no soud — I submit this as a solo entry. There is music for this game, done by P, but as this is not jam, it will only be in the post-compo version. Besides, roguelike games are meant to be played with your own music playing in the background.

Please play it and let me know what you think: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=11694

Normally I spend too much time on the graphics, and barely finish the game. This time I’ve been stopping myself from that, but since there was good progress gameplay-wise, I allowed myself to indulge a little…

You can now actually kill the monsters, and you can die yourself. Killed by monsters or of hunger. You can now eat food, or throw it at the monsters (doesn’t do anything yet), and there is a generic weapon item that you can equip for no effect. I will now let myself procrastinate a little by designing a new level theme for the boss level.

You can pick up items and look at them in your invetory. You can also deal damage to monsters (and be hurt yourself), but there is still no death.

I have objects in the dungeon, and the exit to the next level, so you can now go further, and the next level has more monsters. Next are stats and items.

The monsters now walk around, attack and chase the player if attacked. I also added full animations, so it’s no longer jumping from tile to tile.

I have the first monster, and some basic looped animations.

This is the actual graphics that I’m going to use. I still need to draw the monsters.
Drawing a Miko costume in like 4 pixels is not easy…

Even if I fail this time again, I will have something useful from this. I made reusable, general-purpose window-drawing routine.

So, they say “you can’t make a roguelike game in 48 hours, that’s why we have the 7 day roguelike”. I will try anyways. So far got the level generator (graphics to be raplced with something I draw during the LD):